Friends co-creator spoke to Matthew Perry weeks before he died

Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman spoke to a "really good" seeming Matthew Perry in the weeks before his drug-related death.

Perry died on 28 October 2023 at the age of 54. He was discovered unresponsive in a jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home. An autopsy report revealed he died from the acute effects of ketamine.

A total of five people have now been charged in relation to the death, including Perry's live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, Dr Mark Chavez, Dr Salvador Plasencia, Eric Fleming, and Jasveen Sangha, allegedly known as The Ketamine Queen.

However, in an interview with British newspaper The Times, Kaufman said there was no sign of the tragedy to come. She also wants fans to remember him as a talented comic actor rather than due to his death.

"He is the one (of the Friends cast) I had the most contact with. About two weeks before (he died) he and I were FaceTiming and he seemed really good. Two things come to mind: one of them is to donate to drug treatment centres - let's fight the disease.

"And the second way is to watch Friends and remember him not as a man who died like that but as a man who was hilariously funny and brought joy to everybody."

Perry had long battled addiction and depression problems dating back to his time on Friends, and fellow co-creator David Crane said that when they became aware of his struggles they offered to write him out of the show.

"By the time we became aware of it, we were already a family on a lot of levels," he said. "There was a point where we said to him: 'Do you want to stop (being in the show)?' And he was adamantly like: 'No, this is really important to me.'"