Lisa Kudrow discovered a hidden note from Matthew Perry around one year after the actor passed away.
Kudrow, 61, told Drew Barrymore on the Tuesday, January 7, episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, that she “recently found” a note written to her by Perry while the pair were working on the final episode of Friends in 2004.
Perry, who died in October 2023 at the age of 54 after suffering acute effects of ketamine, had placed the note inside a cookie jar prop he had taken from the hit TV comedy series’ set. “Matthew gave that to me at the end of our last episode,” Kudrow told Barrymore, 49. “I had recently found the note that he had in it for me. I hadn’t opened it up or looked inside of it. But yeah, he did. He had a note in there and I forgot about it.”
Kudrow did not share what was written inside the note, but added that, “timing is everything.”
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The cookie jar was a familiar prop on the Friends set, constructed to resemble a clock with the words, “Cookie Time,” written across it. Kudrow, who portrayed the eccentric Phoebe Buffay on the show, which began in September 1994 and spent ten years on TV screens, recalled a touching memory about the jar during her 2020 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“We were shooting a scene years before we finished,” Lisa told Kimmel, 57, on the talk show in May 2020. “My line was, ‘Ohhh, I’m late. I better get going,’ and it was too late when I realized I don’t have a watch. As the words were coming out I went, ‘Oh good there’s a clock,’ and I gestured to that [the cookie jar] and said, ‘Oh look at the time. I better get going.’”
Kudrow added that Perry, who portrayed the hilarious Chandler Bing, went up to her after her comment and said, “Did you point to the cookie jar and say, ‘Look at the time’?” to which both Kudrow and Perry laughed.
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Perry’s death was ruled an accident two months after he was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home. The actor was pronounced dead on October 28, 2023.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office released a toxicology report concluding that Perry died from ketamine effects, with drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine (used to treat opioid use) listed as contributing factors.
In a tribute to Perry posted via Instagram on November 15 that year, Kudrow wrote, “Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face EVERY DAY. Thank you for your open heart in a six-way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of ‘talking.’ Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then, being completely brilliant.”
