The death has hit his millions of fans hard. As sarcastic wisecracker Chandler Bing on the era-defining, behemoth sitcom Friends, Perry was a regular on our televisions throughout the 90s and someone we often revisited in endless rewatches. It’s of little surprise that the loss of someone who made us laugh, even if we only knew them through a screen, can still cut like a knife.

But however hard it is for fans of Friends, it must be unimaginably devastating for the rest of the core Friends cast – Jennifer Ansiton, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow – who worked alongside Matt for a decade and whose close-knit friendship extended well beyond playing a part. So, why are ‘fans’ not holding back on ‘calling out’ these cast members publicly for having not posted anything online about Perry’s death? Where has our compassion gone, and how is it that even during the most painful of moments – following a loss – we are still not given the grace to process our emotions in private?

As of Monday, none of the other five main cast members had publicly acknowledged Perry’s passing on any of their social channels. However, it didn’t stop so-called fans of the show piling onto recent Instagram posts and asking invasive, insensitive questions about why they’ve not chosen to acknowledge the death less than 24 hours after the news broke.

On the very same day, one fan wrote under a post (in which she wishes her son a happy birthday) on Lisa Kudrow’s IG account, “Why haven’t any of Matthew Perry’s co-stars come out with a statement of regret over his passing?” Over on Matt LeBlanc’s Instagram, under an image he shared in tribute to another friend’s passing, people felt it perfectly acceptable to write things like, “Weird how none of the 5 Friends co-stars have not said one thing about Matthew’s passing??!!” – garnering more than 500 likes in agreement – and “Where is your post about your friend Matthew?”. Somewhat wisely, Jennifer Aniston has her comments switched off.

It’s not the first time that fans’ demands for a statement has outstripped the needs of loved ones trying to process a loss; the sudden death of Angus Cloud saw some Euphoria viewers hound celebrities like Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney over their lack of posting on social media.

There’s something deeply perverse that an event as seismic as a sudden loss needs to be acknowledged by public figures immediately, that celebrities naturally must hear the news of someone dying and that their first reaction must be drafting a statement for their followers in the Notes app, or sharing a poignant memorial post and carousel of images. To be clear: this is not to say that all tributes shared in memory of a lost loved one are ‘performative’, they can be beautiful and help to foster connection, during a shared time of struggle. But they shouldn’t be expected or chased up for.As someone who recently lost a loved one suddenly and unexpectedly, I’ve learned that grief manifests in many guises. Whether it creeps up on you suddenly, or whether it’s been a slow-burning tragedy you’ve been constantly braced for, when grief arrives, it hangs over you. The feelings you’re forced to confront are cloying and suffocating. Every action is now infused with overwhelming emotions, your thoughts become poisoned and polluted with sorrow, tinged with guilt.

friends cast arrive at galapinterest

When someone dies without any prior warning, questions start to race through your head. You think about the last time you saw them, what you last talked about, whether you did enough to help. Grief is in everything you do. It makes you justifiably selfish. The feelings of others around you, particularly those you don’t know, become almost impossibly small.

With an actor passing from a show as big and beloved as Friends, it’s understandable that some fans of the show may feel they’re in some sort of parasocial relationship with the cast. A show like Friends encouraged us to see the sixsome as people we knew personally and loved deeply – we were the seventh person bantering with them over coffee in Central Perk. The nature of social media, where we can see what the stars from the series are all doing in real-time, adds to this feeling that we know them personally. However, the fact we can have this easy access to huge stars has infused social media with an element of performance, demanding ‘pics or it didn’t happen’. Or in this case, ‘pics and a lengthy caption – or you don’t care’.