Matthew Perry memorial outside NYC Friends apartment grows as fans leave flowers and heartfelt tributes to late star following his shock death aged 54

A memorial to late Friends actor Matthew Perry outside the building used in the iconic sitcom has continued to grow since the shock death of the actor aged 54 on Saturday.

The Friends star was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home on Saturday – the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that his cause of death has been ‘deferred’ with the investigation considered ‘ongoing’ by authorities.

Dozens of mourners have placed flowers, heartfelt notes and quotes from Perry’s legendary character Chandler Bing outside the ‘Friends’ building in New York City’s West Village.

Fans’ messages included: ‘Thank you for always making us laugh’ and ‘Friends is my comfort show, thanks for the laughs, you will be missed man!

‘You are so loved and will be missed for generations. Thank you for being our Friend.’

‘Friends was the answer and solution to my anxiety before I even had a word for that feeling.’

Perry had prescription drugs including anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills at his home at the time of his death – but no illegal medications, a police source claims.

The law enforcement mole told TMZ that the Friends star was also in possession of a prescription COPD drug.

COPD stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with the meds found at Perry’s home usually used for people with emphysema or chronic bronchitis.

Perry was a smoker and had also battled an addiction to alcohol as well as opiates, but claimed to have been clean shortly before his suspected drowning death.

Perry wanted to be remembered for helping fellow addicts.

The actor shared his wish in a November 2022 interview, which has resurfaced in the wake of his shock death.

Matthew – whose drug addictions almost killed him – told in the chat on the ‘Q With Tom Power’ podcast, which is being shared online by fans, about how he didn’t want his role as Chandler Bing in Friends to be his legacy: ‘Best thing about me – bar none – is if somebody comes up to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking, can you help me?’ I can say ‘Yes’ and follow up and do it. That’s the best thing.

‘And I’ve said this for a long time, when I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned.

‘I want that to be the first thing that’s mentioned, and I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.’

Matthew admitted he knew despite his wish that his power to help addicts would fall ‘far behind’ on his list of accomplishments when it came to being remembered by fans.

He added: ‘I know it won’t happen, but it would be nice.’

In 2013, Matthew turned his Malibu mansion into a sober living facility for men and named it ‘Perry’s House’.

Matthew also revealed he wrote a theatre production about his addiction battles.

He added: ‘I also wrote my play ‘The End of Longing’, which is a personal message to the world, an exaggerated form of me as a drunk.

‘I had something important to say to people like me, and to people who love people like me.”

Matthew’s memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing: A Candid, Darkly Funny Book’ exposed his struggles with addictions – which got so severe that in 2018 at the age of 49 he suffered a gastrointestinal perforation as a result of his extreme opiate usage.

He was given just a two percent chance of living after being comatose for two weeks and the actor had to use a colostomy bag while his colon healed.

Matthew revealed that while his body was relying on the bag, he woke up covered in his own faeces ’50 to 60′ times throughout the five months he was hospitalized.

He said: ‘I had s*** all over my fave, all over my body, in the bed next door.

‘When it breaks, it breaks. You have to get nurses.’

He said at the peak of his addictions he was consuming about 55 Vicodin pills a day and weighed just 128 pounds.