Jennifer Aniston has reflected on the “heartbreak” of losing her Friends co-star Matthew Perry, while opening up about years of painful media speculation over why she never had children.
The actress, 56, starred as Rachel Green alongside Perry as Chandler Bing in the beloved sitcom from 1994 to 2004 and remained close long after the series ended.
“It’s heartbreaking that he had so many demons,” Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar UK for its November issue.
“But boy, for someone who had that much inner turmoil, he sure got to laugh a lot, and that was everything to him.”
An investigation into Perry’s 2023 death later saw two doctors and a drug dealer among five people charged in connection with the actor’s fatal overdose.
Perry had spoken openly about his decades-long struggle with addiction in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, writing that fans could “gauge” his substance use throughout the show by tracking his weight and facial hair “from season to season”.
Reflecting on the lasting bond she shares with her castmates, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc, Aniston compared their connection to a lifelong marriage.
“I know that if I needed anything, I’d go direct to the chain we have together and they’d be there for me in two seconds flat,” she continued.
“It was like we married each other – they’re my family. Sometimes you love to hate your family, but it’s a lifetime commitment, for sure.”
Elsewhere in the candid interview, Aniston revisited the media scrutiny she faced over her fertility journey, which she first spoke about publicly in Allure in 2022.
In that interview, the actress revealed that she had undergone multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF, all while tabloids speculated for years about whether she was secretly pregnant.
“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family,” she told Harper’s Bazaar.
“That’s not anybody’s business. But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it – the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic. It does affect me – I’m just a human being.”
Aniston previously addressed that narrative in a 2016 Huffington Post op-ed, calling out the relentless objectification and pressure placed on women in the public eye.
Now, she says age and perspective have helped her let go of the need to correct false stories.
“The older I get, the less I care about correcting a narrative,” she said. “Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice – when something has been said that isn’t true and I need to right the wrong. And then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.”
The November issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK is on sale from Thursday, October 9
