Through intimate interviews with family and longtime friends, Netflix’s three-part docuseries explores the life of Matthew Perry beyond Friends, revealing the devastating toll his decades-long battle with addiction took on the people who loved him most.
This is the story of Matthew Perry’s life as told by family and friends. And by Matthew himself.
That’s the title card that opens episode one of the three-part Netflix docuseries, The One About Matthew Perry. What follows is three hours of testimony from those closest to the actor: ex-girlfriends, his sister, longtime friends (though no, actual Friends) and input from the actor himself via archival interviews. The series is part documentary, part therapy session, part eulogy as it’s clear Perry’s inner circle is still coming to terms with his untimely death on October 28th, 2023 at the age of 54-years-old.
“Why are you sharing your story today?” asks director Mary Robertson of Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick. “Ever since Matthew became Matthew Perry, I was always really afraid and really skeptical of ever talking to anyone about my experience with him,” Bowick says. “There’s certainly been a lot of opportunities but I have a lot to say about what happened.”
The documentary traces his early years from his childhood, a period spent splitting his time between living with his mother in Canada and visiting his father in Los Angeles. “It took a while to learn and make sense of what Matthew’s upbringing was. It was like a jigsaw puzzle,” says one friend. Eventually Perry made the move to LA where he pursued an acting career like his father, John Bennett Perry, before him. After unsuccessful auditions for movies like Dead Poets Society, and School Ties and guest roles on shows like Charles in Charge, Silver Spoons, Who’s The Boss, and Growing Pains, and a stint on a short-lived series called L.A.X. 2194, Perry landed what would become his seminal and career-defining role, Chandler Bing on Friends in 1994. “One day I got a phone call and instantly, I knew my whole life was gonna change,” Perry says in an archival interview. Perry tells the story of a prayer/plea he made before making it big: “God, you can do anything to me, just please make me famous’ and about three weeks later I got Friends.” But, as Perry reminds us, “God did not forget the other part.”
While none of the Friends cast are interviewed in the doc – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer were reportedly approached by production but declined participation – several of Perry’s longtime friends, including actor Kevin Pollak step in to tell the story of his life: a journey marked by both tremendous highs and devastating lows. “In the beginning I think he did like the fame but at some point it did start to shift,” his sister reveals. “He would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.”
At first Perry used alcohol to cope. “Alcohol probably quieted that very deep part of himself that always thought he was not enough,” said one friend. “Even though he became a superstar there’s something in his psyche that can’t be soothed.” That superstar status saw Perry eventually cast in his first feature film role, 1997’s Fools Rush In, alongside Salma Hayek. While jetskiing during downtime, Perry suffered an accident which saw him prescribed Vicodin. “The doctor gave me a pill in a package and said take this when you’re done shooting,” Perry says. “I did and then I felt this incredible euphoria so why wouldn’t I take more. Then I started feeling sick when I wasn’t taking them.”
Perry’s foray into prescription meds ignited what would become a lifelong and debilitating struggle with drugs and alcohol. “Who knows what would have happened if that accident didn’t happen,” says Fools Rush In producer Doug Draizin.
For anyone who read Perry’s 2022 autobiography Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, the doc series offers little in the way of new information – and at more than three hours in duration, it really is only for the most devoted of Matthew Perry fans – but what it does offer is insight into the impact his crippling addiction had on those closest to him. “My big brother, my idolized big brother,” says Bowick. “Just seeing him suffering and struggling, I was really scared for him,” she adds. “He would keep it under control as long as work was going really well,” reveals Jonathan Lynn who directed Perry in 2000’s The Whole Nine Yards alongside Bruce Willis. “If anything went wrong or we felt it wasn’t working he would immediately turn to alcohol or pills,” he adds. “Of all the films I’ve made, there’ve always been people who have drank too much but this was different.” “Everybody was worried all the time,” his sister adds.
Perry spent years, and seven million dollars, in and out of rehab trying to bet clean. “His year anniversary for getting sober was always right around my birthday,” reveals his sister. “And he could never quite make it a year.” Anyone who has loved and cared for an addict will relate to the doc as it is filled with stories from Perry’s nearest and dearest on the impact his addiction had on them. One longtime friend recalls how Perry had to pull out of being the best man at his 2011 wedding. “He had to go to rehab,” he recalls. “He wasn’t even at my wedding…I wasn’t mad at him, I was supportive of him but that hurt me because aside from my parents, I wanted him there more than anybody else.”
Things got particularly dire in 2018 when Perry suffered from a ruptured colon and ended up in intensive care. Loved ones weren’t certain he’d pull through. “There’s so much grief friends and family members have to sit with when their loved ones are struggling with substance abuse,” says Bowick. “I would fall into that denial place often” “I was certainly angry at him, I just had a baby, you’re supposed to be an uncle right now.” Adds a friend, “There were a lot of people going, ‘we have no idea if he’s coming out of this thing.” Perry eventually did recover and his loved ones were hopeful. “We all had this joyous feeling,” says one friend. “There was a part of me that was cautiously optimistic,” reveals his sister. “Is this rock bottom, maybe this was the wakeup call?”
Fans got their first look at Perry in quite some time when he appeared on the highly anticipated Friends reunion special in 2021. “I think he wanted to be like I’m here, I’m good, everything’s fine,” his sister says, “which was only half true at that point.” It didn’t take long for online chatter about Matthew’s appearance to dominate the online discourse. “It’s tough to watch because he’s just not himself,” says one friend of the reunion. “I don’t really want to talk about it, I think it speaks for itself,” says another.
The One About Matthew Perry is ultimately the story of the human condition, how one man could seem to have it all but could never get it together, about self-destruction and the aftershocks it leaves behind. Perhaps Perry’s sister sums it up best when she says, “all great stories have comedy and tragedy in them and that was certainly Matthew’s story.”
“The One About Matthew Perry” is currently streaming on Netflix.
