Matthew Perry was ‘100 percent sober’ before death, says friend

Matthew Perry was sober when he died, and did not relapse, according to one of the last friends who saw him. 

The “Friends” star passed away suddenly on Saturday, Oct. 28. He was 54.

Perry, best known for playing sarcastic Chandler Bing, was open about his lifelong struggle with addiction and staying sober, and wrote about his journey and his health issues in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” His death did not appear to be drug related, as he died of an apparent drowning in a hot tub at his home in the ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Law enforcement sources told TMZ that investigators ran a less-in-depth test on the actor that revealed he did not have fentanyl or meth in his system at the time of his death.

More in-depth tests are currently being conducted as part of the toxicology. It can take months to establish an official cause of death, which is still “deferred.”

Amid speculation about the cause, model and entertainment reporter Athenna Crosby, 25, the “mystery woman” last seen with him just 24 hours before his death, is speaking out.

“I am so devastated from his death but felt it was in poor taste to talk about it publicly as the attention should not be on me but rather on him and his legacy and he was an extremely private person and I always respected that in our friendship,” Crosby wrote Wednesday on her Instagram Story.

“But indeed, we were friends and I was one of the last people to speak to him and see him before he passed.”

Crosby, who is Venezuelan, told TMZ that she’d met Perry through mutual friends, and that their lunch date right before his death was not romantic. 

She further told Fox News Digital, “I happen to be the last person to be seen with him. But we were not really involved like that.”

“In the interaction that I had with him, he was extremely positive, sober, acting normal, spoke very well, did not give me any impression that he was under [the influence of] drugs or alcohol of any kind,” she told the outlet.

“So, I think people are speculating that this was a relapse situation. I just want to defend him and say that it was not.”

She further stated that he was “100% sober” when he passed away. 

“I can’t know what exactly he was thinking or feeling… And, of course, he was his own person that maybe he had said, done or thought of things the day that he passed that I might never come to know. Not only is it hard to hear that somebody greatly admired passed away, but it’s eerie to hear that somebody you just spoke to passed away.”

Earlier this week, “Friends” co-creater Marta Kauffman also told “Today” that the late actor was sober and in a “really good place” when she spoke to him just two weeks before his death.

Director Jim Burrows, who helmed more than a dozen episodes of “Friends,” discussed his texts with Perry’s co-stars in an interview with “Today,” which was released Thursday.

“I had texted the girls the day we found out,” he said, referring to Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Courtney Cox. “They were destroyed. It’s a brother dying.” Cox and fellow co-stars David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc have all been spotted stepping out separately since the news.

Crosby, for her part, emphasized to Fox News Digital how run-of-the-mill their lunch was, with nothing out of the ordinary happening.

“I was just having lunch with a friend and did not think anything of it, did not feel like there was anything coming,” she said.

“I didn’t suspect anything. He was completely normal. So, I later went home and did not think about it until the next day when I heard the news….I am now recalling all of the details about it just because the situation has been so tragic. And I’ve been kind of thinking like, ‘OK, was there anything that I, I guess, should have noticed or was there anything that stuck out to me?’ And honestly, no, there wasn’t. He was so normal. He ordered a cheeseburger and had a Diet Coke, and really just a normal day like any other day.”

The Post reached out to Crosby for comment.