Stephanie Beatriz Says Brooklyn Nine-Nine Reunion Was 'a Chance to Talk About' Andre Braugher: 'He Lives in Our Hearts Forever’ (Exclusive)

The Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast sticks together.

Stephanie Beatriz tells PEOPLE that she and her former costars — including Andy Samberg, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero and Chelsea Peretti — are all “still friends” and remain very present in each other’s lives.

“We all love each other very dearly,” she says at the Hulu on Disney+ launch event in Los Angeles on April 5. “I’ll never let those people go. They can try and get rid of me, but it's not going to happen.”

The cast recently suffered a major loss when Andre Braugher died suddenly in December after a private battle with lung cancer. In March, they reunited to reflect on the loss and catch up. Beatriz, 43, says the cast dinner was “a chance for all of us to get together and make each other laugh.”

“And it was also a chance to talk about Andre. It came up immediately, and then we put it away for a while,” she continues. “But at the end of the dinner, by the end, we were all just sharing stories about him and our memories of him. And he lives in our hearts forever and ever."

A photo from the reunion was shared on Instagram in a joint post from Crews, 55, and Fumero, 41. Joe Lo Truglio, Joel McKinnon Miller and Dirk Blocker were also present, along with Samberg, Peretti and Beatriz. Braugher’s Instagram account was tagged in the photo, above the cast members’ smiling faces.

"We laughed. We cried a little. We reminisced. We laughed some more. Nine Nine Forever," the pair wrote in the caption. 

Days after the dinner, Crews spoke to PEOPLE about reuniting with his former castmates, saying of the gathering, “We laughed, we cried, we missed Andre Braugher, who we lost a few months ago.”

“It was our time to reminisce and just think about how special our time together was,” continued Crews, who starred as Sergeant Terry Jeffords in the series. “It was wonderful.”

Reflecting on the eight-season run of the show from 2013 to 2021, he added, "To have a sitcom go that long — I don't know if it's going to happen again. It's very rare, and we all recognize how fortunate we are and we love each other. We'll always be a family. We'll always be connected."

After news broke of Braugher’s death in December, the cast flooded social media with tributes to the late actor, with Peretti, 46, writing on Instagram: “I will always cherish our conversations, often with me hanging in your doorway barring your exit, and the insane opportunity to be your sidekick. Is it weird that I am also grieving for what Captain Holt meant to Gina? I really hoped and knew I would see you again. Hate that I won’t 💔.”

Blocker, who played Hitchcock on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, told PEOPLE that Braugher “was the captain, or the father figure, of the cast.”

“I'll just remember how warm and kind and really how loving he was as a human being. It was just really special.”

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Marc Evan Jackson, who played Braugher's onscreen husband Kevin, shared a sweet snap of the pair from the set on X (formally Twitter) with the caption, "O Captain. My Captain."

In a statement to PEOPLE, Jackson, 53, called Braugher “a giant, a genius, an artist, a legend and a force.”

“Andre elevated every moment he came anywhere near, and it was an honor to have known and worked with him,” he continued. “My deepest condolences to his family, and all those who like all of us, loved him very much.”