Friends director has said the cast were left ‘destroyed’ following the death of their costar Matthew Perry.

James Burrows spoke with NBC’s Liz Kreutz for Today on Thursday as he expressed his ‘utter shock.’

Matthew died aged 54 after he was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Saturday.

James told Liz in an interview: ‘I texted the girls the day we found out and they destroyed. It was a brother dying.’

He added: ‘It’s so sad. I want him to be remembered as a wonderful actor, a funny man and a wonderful friend to a lot of people.’

Earlier this week, his castmates, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer all signed a joint statement about their late co-star Matthew, telling fans they are heartbroken by the news.

‘We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family,’ they told People. ‘There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.’

The stars continued: ‘In time we will say more, as and when we are able,’ the statement continues. ‘For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.’

Perry famously starred as Chandler Bing in the popular sitcom, alongside Aniston as Rachel, Cox as Monica, LeBlanc as Joey, Kudrow as Phoebe and Schwimmer as Ross.

Friends, which followed the lives of six friends in their 20s living in New York, was a smash hit across the globe when it aired between 1994 and 2004, and re-runs still remain hugely popular years later.

This comes after it was revealed that there was no meth or fentanyl in Matthew Perry’s system when he drowned in a hot tub in his California home, initial toxicology reports have revealed.

The late Friends star was found lifeless inside a hot tub outside of his Pacific Palisades home in Los Angeles Saturday. Throughout his life, Perry had been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol.

The common narcotics were not found in Perry’s system during initial tests, according to a TMZ report. But more in-depth testing is underway and would show if the beloved actor had any prescription medication in his system.

When investigators responded to Perry’s home, they did not find any illegal drugs, but found prescription medication that was properly labeled and kept in storage bottles.

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote that after his colon exploded in 2018, he was prescribed opiates that he deemed insufficient to deal with his pain, prompting him to turn to street dealers to supply him with potentially fentanyl-laced OxyContin.

‘The street pills were something like $75 per pill, so I was giving the guy $3,000 at a time, many times a week,’ he wrote.

After an initial investigation, the Los Angeles County coroner has deferred giving a cause of death, which may take weeks to determine. Those who knew him maintain that Perry was clean and sober at the time of his death.

Perry wrote at the beginning of his million-selling memoir: ‘Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.’

On Sunday, Perry’s book was ranked No. 1 on Amazon, supplanting Britney Spears’ memoir.

As he filmed the sitcom-hit Friends in the 90s, many people were unaware of the struggle Perry had with addiction and an intense desire to please audiences.

‘Friends was huge. I couldn’t jeopardize that. I loved the script. I loved my co-actors. I loved the scripts. I loved everything about the show but I was struggling with my addictions which only added to my sense of shame,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘I had a secret and no one could know.

‘I felt like I was gonna die if the live audience didn’t laugh, and that’s not healthy for sure. But I could sometimes say a line and the audience wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and sometimes go into convulsions.’

Perry wrote. ‘If I didn’t get the laugh I was supposed to get I would freak out. I felt that every single night. This pressure left me in a bad place. I also knew of the six people making that show, only one of them was sick.’

He recalled in his memoir that co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about being inebriated while filming.

‘I know you’re drinking,’ he remembered her telling him once. ‘We can smell it,’ she said, in what Perry called a ‘kind of weird but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer.’

A fellow member of Perry’s recovery program told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview Tuesday: ‘Matty wasn’t drinking. He was a big part of our AA community. He was attending meetings, speaking at meetings and was working with a handful of newcomers.

‘He had a sponsor and was a sponsor. He seemed to be doing well.’

The insider said the actor had been focused on helping others battling addiction and had recently expressed interest in sharing his story through public speaking events.

‘Matty said he wanted to return to universities and speak about alcoholism. That was his gift. He could speak so well and motivate people,’ the source added.

‘It was important for him to reach the younger generation and spread his Don’t Give Up message. He really lived by those words.

‘He always made people laugh, even in meetings. But he was also spiritual, not religious, but spiritual. He walked the talk and knew this was his mission. To help other people, to give them hope.

‘Matty will forever be the definition of hope because he never, ever gave up. He turned his life around and helped countless people in the program. More than he could imagine.’

Fentanyl, a powerful opioid, is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that drug overdose deaths have increased more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021.

More than 100,000 deaths a year have been linked to drug overdoses since 2020 and about two-thirds of those are related to fentanyl. The death toll is more than 10 times as many drug deaths as in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.

The U.S. has taken a slew of actions to stem the tide of fentanyl coming into the country. Overall, the Biden administration has imposed over 200 sanctions related to the illegal drug trade.State lawmakers nationwide are responding to the deadliest overdose crisis in U.S. history by pushing harsher penalties for possessing fentanyl.