Max is honoring late “Friends” star Matthew Perry, who died on Saturday at the age of 54, with a tribute card at the start of each season of the sitcom on the streaming platform.
“In memory of Matthew Perry 1969-2023,” reads the card, which flashes on screen for approximately five seconds before the iconic “Friends” opening sequence. All 10 seasons of “Friends” are currently available to stream on Max.
Perry, best known for his role as the hilarious Chandler Bing on the series, was found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home, as law enforcement sources told the L.A. Times. No foul play was suspected.
Perry’s death resulted in an outpouring of remembrances from Hollywood, including from “Friends” co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane and executive producer Kevin Bright.
“We are shocked and deeply, deeply saddened by our beloved friend Matthew’s passing. It still seems impossible. All we can say is that we feel blessed to have had him as part of our lives,” they said in a statement. “He was a brilliant talent. It’s a cliche to say that an actor makes a role their own, but in Matthew’s case, there are no truer words. From the day we first heard him embody the role of Chandler Bing, there was no one else for us. We will always cherish the joy, the light, the blinding intelligence he brought to every moment – not just to his work, but in life as well. He was always the funniest person in the room. More than that, he was the sweetest, with a giving and selfless heart.”
PvNew‘s Daniel D’Addario honored Perry as “the comic soul of ‘Friends,'” writing that Chandler’s “caustic wit, as performed by a master comic actor, presented as nothing more and nothing less than observational humor about his friends: One degree harsher and it would have tanked the show, one degree softer and it wouldn’t have landed. And yet it always did, no matter how good or bad the script, no matter what Perry was going through.”
