LOS ANGELES — Jennifer Aniston has always been careful about what she shares. But during a quiet production lunch on the set of her latest Netflix drama, a small detail slipped through — one that revealed just how deep her connection with Matthew Perry really was.

It started, she said, “with toast.”

Back in 2002, while filming Season 9 of Friends, Matthew had walked onto set holding two slices of burnt toast. Everyone else had coffee or smoothies. But not him.

“Guess what this is,” he asked Jennifer.

She shrugged.

“This is what my soul feels like at 7 AM.”

Jennifer burst out laughing. The whole table did.

But Matthew stayed serious. “I’m serious,” he said. “I like it this way. A little burned. Still holding together. Just enough bitter to wake you up.”

After that, it became a bit. Every Tuesday morning shoot, Jennifer would bring him a slice of burnt toast wrapped in a napkin. Sometimes with notes written on it: Still here. Still holding. Still bitter enough to be real.

Jennifer Aniston

What no one knew — and what Jennifer only recently revealed — is that she kept doing it for years, even long after Friends ended.
Every Tuesday.
Burnt toast.
Wrapped in a napkin.
Even when she wasn’t filming.

“It felt stupid at first,” she admitted during the lunch. “But then it just… felt like connection. Like proof that someone remembered.”

The twist came when one of her personal assistants found a small box in Jennifer’s kitchen drawer in late 2023. Inside were dozens of used napkins, all dated, some stained, some with short scribbles like Still here or Good days come slow.

When asked why she kept them, Jennifer simply said:
“Because that was the last joke no one else understood.”

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According to a member of her current team, Jennifer had stopped the ritual in early October 2023. “She hadn’t missed a Tuesday in years,” they said. “Then, suddenly… nothing. And none of us understood why — until the news broke.”

Matthew Perry passed away on October 28, 2023.

Jennifer didn’t post anything right away. No tribute. No statement. She went quiet — a silence fans felt deeply. But close friends now confirm that on the Tuesday following his passing, Jennifer toasted one last slice. Burnt. Crisped dark at the edges.

She didn’t eat it.
She placed it on a napkin. Wrote something.
Then, later that night, she burned it in her fireplace.

The note, according to someone who briefly saw it before the flames took over, read:
You’re still here. Just a little bitter. Just enough to wake me up.

Today, Jennifer’s kitchen drawer no longer holds napkins. But on her fridge, tucked beneath a magnet shaped like a Central Perk coffee mug, is a tiny square of blackened paper — the corner of that last note, the only piece that didn’t burn.

She hasn’t spoken about it publicly. But during a Netflix cast dinner in May 2024, when someone asked her what kind of person she was on set, she paused for a moment.

Then said softly:
“I was the one who remembered the toast.”