They played lovers Monica and Chandler who ended up getting married on the long-running TV show Friends.

And now a source is claiming that in real life 50-year-old Matthew Perry has always had a thing for his 55-year-old co-star Courteney Cox.

‘Matthew’s always been in love with her,’ a source told Us Weekly. ‘Matthew has never fully been able to get over her.’

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Secret crush? They played lovers then marrieds on the TV show Friends. And now a source is claiming that in real life Matthew Perry has always had a thing for Courteney Cox. ‘Matthew’s always been in love with her,’ a source told Us Weekly

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They were always close: The stars worked together for a decade. Here is Perry as Chandler Bing, Matt Le Blank as Joey Tribbiani, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, Courteney as Monica Geller

Perry and Cox enjoyed lunch together on November 7. ‘Could I BE any happier? #realfriends,’ she said in her caption.

This comes after they posed together for Jennifer Aniston’s Friends reunion photo that was shared to Instagram. It was her very first post and broke the Internet.

Cox was wed to David Arquette from 1999 until 2013. She is now dating rock star Johnny McDaid.

Perry has dated Yasmine Bleeth, Julia Roberts and Lizzy Caplan.

This comes the day after The Hollywood Reporter revealed that talks are under way for a Friends reunion special that would bring back all six main cast members – Cox and Perry as well as Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc – plus creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman.

Sources stress that no deals are in place at this time, but the fact that all of the cast members and creators are willing to come together again is a big step forward.

If and when the deals for the cast and creators get finalized, then they will have to sort out the schedules for all six stars and the creators, which could be tricky to say the least.

HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television refused to comment on the report, but it comes just months after HBO Max secured a deal for the original Friends series.

Friends, which aired 10 seasons on NBC from 1994 to 2004, had been streaming in its entirety on Netflix since January 2015.

However, it was reported in July that the new WarnerMedia streaming service HBO Max had obtained the rights to Friends, outbidding Netflix for the coveted rights, with the show leaving Netflix at the end of 2019 and HBO Max slated to launch in May 2020.

HBO Max paid $85 million per year in a five-year deal for the streaming rights worth $425 million, after Netflix had paid a sum between $80 million and $100 million to keep Friends on their service for all of 2019.

Sources claim that WarnerMedia Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt was a ‘driving force’ in pushing for the Friends reunion.

The cast and creators have been adamant over the years that a reunion or a reboot would never happen.

Aniston revealed in October on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show that a reboot, ‘won’t be even close to as good what it was,’ and it, ‘would ruin’ the original.

She did seem more amenable to a reunion, though, telling Ellen in June that, ‘I would do it,’ and she thought the rest would be on board too.

‘The girls would do it. And the boys would do it, I’m sure,’ Aniston said at the time, though nothing was set in stone about a reunion at the time.

She even hinted that something was brewing between the cast, adding, ‘We would love for there to be something, but we don’t know what that something is. So we’re just trying. We’re working on something.’

Perhaps the most surprising element to this reunion is creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman coming aboard, since they emphatically stated just months earlier it would not happen.

‘We will not be doing a reunion show, we will not be doing a reboot. The show was about that time in life when friends are your family,’ said Marta Kauffman at the Tribeca TV Festival.

David Crane added, ‘We did the show we wanted to do. We got it right, and we put a bow on it.’

A reunion of one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time would certainly be quite the boon for an upstart streaming service like HBO Max, though it’s still a long way from happening.

This also comes as Warner Bros. Television has been celebrating the 25th anniversary of the show’s debut with a number of events.

The celebration includes pop-ups of the Central Perk coffee shop the characters hung out at, special screenings and replica Friends couches popping up at random landmarks around the globe.