Just one day before he was shockingly found dead in a hot tub at his home, Matthew Perry was out having lunch with a brunette at the famed Hotel Bel-Air and appeared to be in good spirits.
TMZ obtained photos of the beloved Friends star enjoying a meal with a mystery woman. According to the outlet, the photos were snapped on Oct. 27 at around 2:30 p.m. Eyewitnesses told TMZ that he appeared in good spirits while chatting with the woman, and that he was so engaged in the conversation that he barely touched his drink or food.
The woman has since been identified as 25-year-old Athenna Crosby, who shared on Instagram that she and Perry were friends. The lunch outing purportedly lasted over an hour, and TMZ reports the pair left together. Crosby later took to Instagram and said she had "the honor of knowing Matthew personally."
"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," Crosby said in an Instagram post. "He was an extremely private person and I always respected that in our friendship. But indeed, we were friends and I was one of the last people to speak to him and see him before he passed."
In a follow-up post, Crosby confirmed the Friends star "was in extremely good spirits, and talked to me enthusiastically about the things that he had coming up in his life. He was happy & vibrant."
TMZ recently reported that Perry "was never happier" prior to the actor being found dead in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28 at approximately 4 p.m. from an apparent drowning. He was 54.
In a statement to ET, the Los Angeles Fire Department provided details of what they observed when they arrived at Perry's home.
"Los Angeles City Firefighters responded to [a residence] at 4:07 p.m., PT on Oct. 28, 2023, to find an adult male unconscious in a stand-alone jacuzzi," the LAFD's statement read. "A bystander had brought the man's head above the water and gotten him to the edge, then firefighters removed him from the water upon their arrival."
"A rapid medical assessment, sadly, revealed the man was deceased prior to first responder arrival," the statement continued. "The circumstances are under investigation by LAPD and the LA County Medical Examiner. We mourn with families and friends who lose a loved one unexpectedly."
TMZ was first to report Perry's death.
That Perry appeared to be in good spirits just prior to his death supports what Friends creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane shared in an emotional interview on Wednesday's Today, where Kauffman said that she had last spoken to Perry just two weeks earlier. During that conversation, Kauffman said Perry seemed full of life.
"He was happy and chipper," Kauffman recalled. "He didn’t seem weighed down by anything. He was in a really good place, which is why this seems so unfair."
She added, "He seemed better than I had seen in a while. I was so thrilled to see that. He was emotionally in a good place. He looked good. He quit smoking."
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