Lauren Graham is revealing the last gift she received from Matthew Perry just seven months before her unexpectedly passed away.
While on her Have I Told You This Already? book tour, Graham admitted “it’s still really hard to believe” Perry is gone. Perry, as Graham told her audience was “a constant and a friend” in her life, People reported.
“While he was not technically ever a boyfriend, he was an almost in my life,” Graham shared. “We would stretch for a year, then he would come back in my life, and he had just come back in my life last year.”
After picking up where they left off, Graham revealed Perry gave her a birthday gift last March, seven months before his passing; a pickleball set. Heartbreakingly, reports revealed that Perry played a round of pickleball with his friends just hours before his passing in October 2023.
“He’s like really into tennis and pickleball, with a card that said, ‘Be older,’ ” she said, adding that his death is “a terrible loss.”
While a guest on CBS Morning, Graham one first opened up about her past with Perry about a month after his passing.
Lauren Graham, who is best known for her role on Gilmore Girls, also acted alongside Perry several times on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Odd Couple, and Go On. The friends also reportedly dated early on in their careers, though neither Perry nor Graham have confirmed those rumors.
Yet despite their rumored romantic relationship, Graham and Perry remained great friends for a long time. Now Graham is remembering Perry, admitting she still hasn’t come to terms with this unexpected passing.
“No one made me laugh as hard,” Graham said on CBS Mornings. “I mean, just tears streaming. There was just such joy in being around him and being his friend.”
“And I’ll say too, that this last year, he was so proud of the book he wrote and of how many people it touched. And it was a success that gave him a level of happiness that I hadn’t seen in him for a really long time. So that’s a nice memory.”
Graham became a part of Perry’s memoir when shared a picture of the two of them together in his book.
“It’s just a really tragic loss and he leaves his beautiful work behind and that’s something to be thankful for,” Graham added. “And again, the book really meant something to him. So it was a really happy year for him.”
As Mamas Uncut previously reported, the actor was discovered unconscious in his hot tub on October 28. He was just 54 years old.
On December 15, Matthew Perry’s official cause of death was confirmed by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner. His caused of death was listed as “acute effects of ketamine.” Drowning, coronary artery disease and buprenorphine effects, according to the autopsy, was also listed as a contributing causes.
The autopsy further added that Perry’s death “occurred by unknown route of drug intake.”
Inside Edition also alleges that just hours before his passing, the 54-year-old was seen playing pickleball with a group of friends. Pickleball had become his latest obsession and playing for at least two hours every day.
But according to Inside Edition’s sources, after about an hour of playing that Saturday, Perry told his friends he felt “fatigued” and went home early. At his home, the actor asked his assistant to run a few errands while he soaked in his hot tub. It was when Perry’s assistant returned to his place that he was discovered unresponsive under the water.