Inside Matthew Perry’s Bond With His Fellow Friends Stars

“It’s funny, when we do get together, it’s like no time has passed,” LeBlanc told People. “We pick up right where we left off.”

Yet the trip down memory lane was also “brutal” for various reasons, Aniston told Lowe, explaining, “It’s nostalgic in a way that’s kind of also a little melancholy. ‘Cause a lot has changed and we have all gone down different roads, some easy and some not so easy for each of us.”

While they were making Friends, Perry kept the direst details of his condition to himself, not only to save face or because he was in denial, but because he didn’t want to screw it up for everyone else.

“I was the injured penguin,” he wrote, “but I was determined to not let these wonderful people, and this show, down.” Though, he added, addiction could still win the day, such as the time he dozed off on the Central Perk couch and LeBlanc nudged him awake before he missed his cue.

“Secrets kill you,” Perry reflected to Sawyer last year. “Secrets kill people like me.”