Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox got Us in the holiday spirit by kicking off Thanksgiving early.
“A few scenes from Friendsgiving,” Aniston, 55, wrote via Instagram on Monday, November 25, alongside Polaroids of the pair all smiles at the party.
Aniston and Cox, 60, formed a friendship after starring on Friends from 1994 to 2004. Earlier this year, Aniston told Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson about how she has continued to consistently remain in touch with her former costars.
“We still talk to each other,” Aniston said for Variety‘s Actors on Actors special in June. “I talked on FaceTime with Court Cox last night for, like, an hour. And Lisa [Kudrow] and the boys. It’s a family forever.”
A year prior, Aniston and Kudrow praised Cox at her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony.
“To be friends with Courteney is to be family with Courteney,” Aniston told the audience in February 2023. “She was immediately inclusive — warm, loving interested in everything about you. I was really nervous to meet her because I was a huge fan.”
The duo recalled Cox being the most famous cast member at the beginning of Friends, with Kudrow adding, “She was the only one of the cast who was famous. So I feel like we were all sort of taking our cues from her at first to see what the Courteney Cox show was gonna be,” Kudrow recalled.
Aniston, however, pointed out that Cox didn’t take the spotlight.
“From the very beginning, she made it very clear that this was a true ensemble,” she continued. “She instilled into all of us into our DNA to support each other and to love one another, and that actors need to support and love one another not compete with one another.”
Aniston added. “Those wise words have stayed with me and I learned them as a young 20-something-year-old actor. And that really set me on my path as a young woman and being able to have creative relationships that I cherish to this very day.”
Friends’ successful run on NBC skyrocketed Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer to fame. The group has stayed close, navigating tragedy together when Perry died at age 54 in October 2023 due to “acute effects of ketamine.”
Us Weekly confirmed at the time that officers responded to a call of someone in cardiac arrest at a Los Angeles home, where they found the actor unconscious in a hot tub.
“Oh boy this one has cut deep,” Aniston wrote via Instagram one month. “Having to say goodbye to our Matty has been an insane wave of emotions that I’ve never experienced before. We all experience loss at some point in our lives. Loss of life or loss of love. Being able to really SIT in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. And we loved him deeply. He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be.”
Aniston reflected on her close bond with Perry, adding, “For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’ he thought he was going to die. His life literally depended on it. And boy did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard.”
Two months after Perry’s death, the toxicology report from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office listed drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine — which is used to treat addiction — as contributing factors.
Perry’s death was ruled an accident and an initial investigation closed in January but was subsequently reopened. Five people have since been federally charged for Perry’s death.
Perry’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death, and Perry’s acquaintance Erik Fleming pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death. Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Jasveen Sangha a.k.a the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine.
Dr. Mark Chavez, meanwhile, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to distribute ketamine. Chavez, Iwamasa and Fleming agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for lesser charges.
Aniston recently honored Perry by sharing throwback photos, writing via Instagram in October, “1 year ❤️🩹🕊️.”
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