Lauren Graham Reveals What Friend Matthew Perry Got Her for Her Birthday 6 Months After His Passing

Lauren Graham took time to praise her friendship with Matthew Perry while on her Have I Told You This Already? book tour.

On Friday, April 5, while speaking to her audience at Lincoln Theater in Washington D.C., she reminisced on her relationship with the late Friends alum.

“It’s still really hard to believe,” the Gilmore Girls alum, 57, said of the actor’s October 28, 2023 death.

The 17 Again star sadly passed away at age 54 in his Los Angeles-area home due to acute effects of ketamine.

“While he was not technically ever a boyfriend, he was an almost in my life,” Graham said of her relationship with Perry, adding he was “a friend and a constant.”

“We would stretch for a year, then he would come back in my life, and he had just come back in my life last year,” she explained before noting what Perry had given her for her birthday in March of last year.

For the celebration, Graham recalled Perry gifting her “a pickleball set.” The star smiled as she recounted the story while the audience laughed with her.

“He’s like really into tennis and pickleball, with a card that said, ‘Be older,’” she said, noting his passing was “a terrible loss.”

Perry had a similar fondness for Graham, which he expressed during a Q&A of his own for his show The Odd Couple.

The author called Graham, “one of my favorite people,” adding, “We have great chemistry when working together and it’s fun to work with a close friend.”

As OK! previously reported, another of Perry close pals and romantic partners Maeve Quinlan recently gushed about the celeb.

In an interview published on March 28, the 59-year-old actress admitted she initially knew Perry as simply "the cute guy" before meeting him in the elevator of their L.A. apartment building.

"I had the biggest crush on him," she admitted. "But I never saw him again because by the time the show was picked up, he had — like every actor does — moved to the Hollywood Hills."

After his move, the duo reconnected at a charity tennis event in 2002 and eventually "embarked on a romantic relationship." She noted Perry was "100 percent sober" at the time and had been "very open" with her about his substance abuse issues.

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"That was his one fully sober year, and we were practically inseparable," she remembered. "One of the reasons he liked being with me was that I didn’t do drugs."

The former lovebirds later split on 2003, though Quinlan said they "seamlessly" became "best friends," raving that even at the "height of his fame" he remained the same guy she'd met years ago.

People reported on Graham's Q&A.