Lauren Graham Speaks Out About Matthew Perry's Happy Year Before His Death

Matthew Perry and Lauren Graham both rose to fame on hit network TV shows. Perry with "Friends" and Graham with "Gilmore Girls," and they worked together on several projects over the years, including a guest-starring role as Perry's character's ex-wife on Perry's three-season reboot of "The Odd Couple" and the 2008 film "Birds of America."

There were also rumors in the 2000s that Graham was one of the women that Perry was dating, but the two of them said that they were never a couple. Perry felt a lot of feelings for Graham, just not ones that went into the romance department. And Graham has now spoken publicly about Perry for the first time after his unexpected death in October 2023.

On CBS Mornings, Graham talked about her best memory of Perry: "This last year, he was so proud of the book he wrote, and of how many people it touched," Graham said. "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."

Lauren Graham also revealed on CBS Mornings just how much positivity Matthew Perry brought to her life: "No one made me laugh as hard. Just tears, streaming. There was just such joy in being around him and being his friend." That ability to make his close friends laugh, and laugh hard, has consistently been mentioned in many of the tributes that have come in from Perry's loved ones, including Jennifer Aniston's tribute to Perry as well as Lisa Kudrow's.

Graham and Perry both mentioned each other positively in their respective memoirs. In "Talking As Fast As I Can," Graham referred to Perry as "my longtime Friend Who I Almost But Never Exactly Dated, or FWIABNED." And in "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing," Perry included a picture with the caption, "Me and the beautiful Lauren Graham." And at an event for "The Odd Couple," he called her "one of my favorite people." So it makes sense that Graham said she was still "in shock" over Perry's death. "It's just a really tragic loss," Graham said. We completely agree.