Hank Azaria Credits Matthew Perry for Helping Him Get Sober: ‘I Really Loved Him’

Hank Azaria is paying tribute to his longtime friend Matthew Perry.

On Saturday (October 28), the Friends star tragically died by an apparent drowning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 54.

The day after Matthew‘s passing, Hank, 59, shared a video message honoring Matthew, who he says was “the funniest man ever.”

“Matthew was the first friend I made in Los Angeles, when I moved there. I was 21, he was 16,” Hank shared on Instagram. “Matthew and I became really good friends and we were really more like brothers for a long time. We drank a lot together, we laughed a lot together, we were there for each other in the early days of our career.”

“I really loved him. A lot of us who were close to him felt like we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago because — as he documented in his autobiography — there was so much suffering,” Hank continued, adding of Matthew’s 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, “I had to pick up and put down that biography, like, 11 times, it was so painful for me to read.”

Hank – who is a recovering alcoholic – also reflected on how Matthew‘s struggles with addiction affected their friendship.

“I’m a sober guy for 17 years, and I wanna say that, the night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in. The whole first year I was sober, we went to meetings together,” Hank recalled. “He was so caring and giving and wise. And he totally helped me get sober. And I really wish he could’ve, you know, found the – found it in himself to stay with the silver life more consistently.”

He continued, “But it’s heartbreaking, for those of us who loved him and knew him really well, personally. We just missed him. We just missed him. It’s one of the terrible things about this disease, is it just takes away the person you love.”

Hank then went on praise Matthew‘s comedic skills.

“He just lived to laugh and every night he would – he was like a genius. He would weave — he would start to weave comedy threads together, just hanging out,” Hank said. “A joke here, a joke there. A joke here, a joke there. And then by the end of the night, he’d weave them all together in this crescendo of hilarity. Most nights you spent with Matthew you were crying laughing by the end.”

He concluded, “As an actor, he was so brilliant. I just wish we – the world — I and the world — could have gotten what the rest of his career would’ve been.”

Along with being very good friends, Hank and Matthew shared the screen on Friends with Hank playing David, a love interest for Lisa Kudrow‘s character Phoebe.

In his memoir, Matthew wrote about how he wants to be remembered after he dies.