CNN
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Matthew Perry often spoke about how much he wanted to help people. A year after his death, those who loved him are healing with that same feeling at the forefront of their minds.

“It’s been hard for everyone,” Perry’s sister Caitlin Morrison recently told CNN.

Morrison, the daughter of Suzanne Morrison and Perry’s stepfather, “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison, is executive director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada, which launched last week.

It has long been the actor’s dream to help others struggling with addiction. Now those who knew him best are working to make his wish come true in his absence.

Canada’s Matthew Perry Foundation focuses on providing housing, mental health, career and financial support to individuals in their first year of recovery as they navigate what Morrison described as a “very tenuous time in early sobriety,” a time that she says she experienced. Perry also has trouble with it.

“I remember him saying a few times that that first year was such a beast. There were so many roadblocks and so many difficulties,” she recalled. “We thought it would be just something that would tie into something he wanted to do, saying, ‘Well, let’s help people.’ Let’s help people get past that hurdle that was such a high and difficult hurdle to clear when he first fought his battle.”

Perry’s mother, his lifelong friend Brian Murray and Cara Vaccarino, the president and CEO of Canadian mental health research firm The Royal, are also involved in the organization.

Morrison said putting effort into her own healing has helped.

“If the work I do now prevents a family from feeling this way, it is a relief to my own grief,” she added.

Perry is best known for playing the smart and sweet Chandler Bing on “Friends,” alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc from 1994 to 2004. He also played Oscar Madison in the 2015 reboot of The Odd Couple” series, and appeared in films such as “17 Again”, “The Whole Nine Yards” and “Fools Rush In”.

His acting style tended toward outrageously funny, but could veer toward the vulnerablely human with charming ease. It was always uniquely his own.

Behind the scenes, he struggled with addiction, which he chronicled in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.” By speaking publicly about it, Perry sought to bring comfort and healing to those who faced the same adversities he did.

Perry died in October 2023 at his home in Pacific Palisades. He was 54.

His death was the result of “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office autopsy report.

Five people have now been charged in connection with his death.

Three of the five people charged have reached plea agreements, while the other two will appear in court this spring.

In November 2023, days after Perry’s death, Lisa Kasteler and Doug Chapin – his former longtime publicist and manager, respectively – founded the Matthew Perry Foundation in California. Chapin jokingly calls it “the last order we received from our customer.”

“And we put it into action immediately,” he said.

The organization is sponsored and maintained by the National Philanthropic Trust, which helps the Matthew Perry Foundation provide resources and funding to West Coast organizations working to combat addiction in their communities.

Chapin and Kasteler said stigma played a role in the challenges Perry faced during his own recovery journey, and combating that stigma is one of their main goals.

“I know if Matthew hadn’t been ashamed, he would be here,” Kasteler said. “If we do nothing more than take away the stigma around this, because that just leads to so many other things, then I’m happy.”

Kasteler – who Perry affectionately described as her “favorite” client – ​​was planning to retire after a decades-long career at leading PR firm Wolf Kasteler before Perry died. She now serves as the foundation’s executive director. Chapin is chairman of the foundation’s board.

Both Kasteler and Chapin acknowledge how rare it is in the entertainment industry to have had such a long-term, deeply personal relationship with a client. Both Kasteler and Chapin said their continued work with the foundation over the past year has helped keep Perry close to their hearts.

“Retirement didn’t exactly work out,” Kasteler said. “But that’s OK, because I think this is the most important work I’ve done.”

Added Chapin: “He still feels alive in many ways. He is still so central to our lives and we still basically work for him. It keeps him alive. So it is something that helps on these difficult days.”

Many of Perry’s former co-stars have been open about their grief.

His “Friends” castmates issued a statement in the days following his death, but individually they continued to talk about the pain of his absence.

Last year, Aniston wrote in a tribute: “If you can truly SIT in this sadness, you can feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone so deeply. And we loved him very much.”

His “Friends” castmates weren’t the only ones. Throughout his career, Perry was part of several ensemble casts.

In a recent interview with CNN, Yvette Nicole Brown, who co-starred with Perry and Thomas Lennon in “The Odd Couple,” remembered Perry as “an open book” whose loss taught her to “cherish every moment.”

“You don’t know the last time you’re going to talk to someone,” she said. “That’s the biggest lesson from him.”

As much as Brown looked up to Perry as a professional, she admitted she was also a fan. In their early days on set, she tried to suppress her excitement, only looking Perry in the eye when necessary. Perry took it.

“He said, ‘Yvette, come on. It’s me. We are here together,” she recalled. “He was very aware – and not from a conceited or arrogant space – of his impact (and) he wanted people to feel comfortable. Above all, Matthew wanted people to feel comfortable.”

Perry always took care of people and wanted them to do well, Brown said — whether it was costars or a stranger who was forging his own path because of his addiction.

“That’s why I keep saying yes to speaking about him, because I don’t want anything else that comes out in the lustful space to overshadow the heart of him and the kindness of him, the friendship of him,” she said . “The circumstances under which he left here and the people who had a hand in them should not be the last word about who he was as a person. He was so much more than that, so much more than that.”