Julia Roberts has opened up about Matthew Perry's death

Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts on the set of "Friends" entitled "The One After the Super-Bowl"

(Image credit: Getty)

published 5 December 2023

Julia Roberts has shared her thoughts on Matthew Perry's death , five weeks after the Friends star tragically passed away at his home in Pacific Palisades, California. In the weeks after his death, a number of his co-stars - including Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox - shared tributes to Matthew, and Jennifer Aniston recently urged her followers on social media to support causes close to the late star's heart.

Now, Julia Roberts - who had a cameo role on Friends in the 90s - sat down with Mahershala Ali to discuss their new film, Leave the World Behind. During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the interviewer asked the Notting Hill star how she felt about the news of Matthew's death given that they had worked together for the episode The One After the Super Bowl in 1996.

"All good thoughts and feelings," Julia said. "They were all so welcoming to me as just a kind of a one-off character and it was a really fun time. A sudden passing of anybody so young is heartbreaking. I think that it just helps all of us just appreciate what we have and to keep going in a positive way as best we can."

Mahershala also added: "It's beautiful he could sort of be honoured in that way [in the film]. Or the show sort of be honoured, coincidentally, at this time. So it's kinda nice that it has a little space in there."

Leave the World Behind, a thriller, was released on 24 November.

As for why people were eager to hear Julia's feelings about Matthew's death, it's because the two of them reportedly dated around the time she made her Friends cameo. In his 2022 memoir, titled Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew revealed that he and Julia had shared a 'three-month-long courtship' back then.

Iris Goldsztajn is a celebrity and royal news writer for Marie Claire. As a London-based freelance journalist, she writes about wellness, relationships, pop culture, beauty and more for the likes of InStyle, Women's Health, Bustle, Stylist and Red. Aside from her quasi-personal investment in celebs' comings and goings, Iris is especially interested in debunking diet culture and destigmatising mental health struggles. Previously, she was the associate editor for Her Campus, where she oversaw the style and beauty news sections, as well as producing gift guides, personal essays and celebrity interviews. There, she worked remotely from Los Angeles, after returning from a three-month stint as an editorial intern for Cosmopolitan.com in New York. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles, she interned at goop and C California Style and served as Her Campus' national style and LGBTQ+ editor. Iris was born and raised in France by a French father and an English mother. Her Spotify Wrapped is riddled with country music and One Direction, and she can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.

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