Gilmore Girls alum Lauren Graham hosted a Q&A Friday during her Have I Told You This Already? book tour. Speaking to an audience at the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C., the discussion turned to her friendship with the late Matthew Perry.

“It’s still really hard to believe,” Graham said of Perry’s death.

Perry died at age 54 in his Los Angeles-area home on Oct. 28, 2023 from ketamine use that led to his drowning in a hot tub.

“While he was not technically ever a boyfriend, he was an almost in my life,” Graham said. Perry was “a friend and a constant.”

“We would stretch for a year, then he would come back in my life, and he had just come back in my life last year,” she said, sharing that Perry bought her a pickleball set for her birthday that March.

“He’s like really into tennis and pickleball, with a card that said, ‘Be older,’ ” she said, calling his death “a terrible loss.”

A photo of Perry and Graham appeared in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. “Me and the beautiful Lauren Graham,” the caption read.

Graham that Perry was proud of how his confessional book was received.

“The solace I take from having seen him at the time I saw him was he was so thrilled with how his book was received — and not just because it was a huge success, but because his life’s work kind of became, ‘How can I give back? How can I talk about the struggles I had and hopefully help someone else?’” she said.