Friends fans won’t be surprised to hear that the new Matthew Perry documentary on Netflix, The One About Matthew Perry, is a tough, heart-breaking watch.
This three-episode docuseries, which began streaming on Tuesday, was directed by Mary Robertson (Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV). It walks viewers through Perry’s early career, his break-out success on Friends, and his subsequent life-long battle with drugs and alcohol addiction, until his ketamine-related death in 2023 at the age of 54. The Friends star had long been outspoken about his addiction issues, and even published a tell-all memoir detailing his drug abuse the year before his death.
The One About Matthew Perry did not manage to get interviews with anyone major involved with Friends (other than former NBC president Warren Littlefield, and former Friends writer Jeff Strauss), but does feature an extensive, revealing interview with Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick.
Bowick—a licensed psychotherapist, writer, and speaker—is the Friends actor’s half-sister on their father’s side. Though they did not grow up together (Perry mostly stayed with his mother), they became close when Perry was an adult. In his final years, Bowick was Perry’s health care proxy, forced to make difficult decisions on Perry’s behalf—like when he nearly died from an opioid overdose in 2018.
Bowick knew her brother very well, and shared several heartbreaking details about his life in the documentary.
-
Perry was not doing well when Friends: The Reunion was filmed in 2021.
Photo: HBO Max When Friends: The Reunion released on HBO Max in 2021, fans were quick to point out on social media that Perry did not seem OK. In The One About Matthew Perry, Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick confirmed that he was struggling during the reunion.
“After it aired, I think he felt relieved,” Bowick says in the docuseries. “After he filmed it, I know he felt really tired. He was kind of at this place of, ‘How am I going to keep going?’ I know he was really scared. I know he was really fighting for his life. I know that a lot of parts of him did not think it was possible for him to live a sober life.”
The reunion was filmed three years after Perry spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital in 2018, following an opioid overdose. Even after he left the hospital, it was a long road to recovery.
“He hadn’t been on camera in a while,” said Kevin Pollak, Perry’s longtime friend and co-star on The Whole Nine Yards. “And you could see him struggling in it. [The Friends reunion] is tough to watch, because he’s just not himself.”
-
The Friends cast held hands while paying their respects to Perry at his funeral.
Photo: HBO Max Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, was surprised and moved by the appearance of all five Friends cast members appearing at her brother’s small, private funeral in 2023.
“I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years,” recalled Perry’s sister through tears. “Jen Aniston was the first one of them to come up to me and give me a huge hug. But they all did. And then all five of them walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around him crying.”
-
Perry was over the moon about the success of his 2022 memoir.
Photo: Los Angeles Times via Getty Images In the months leading up to his death, Perry was, according to his sister Mia Perry Bowick, “the happiest we’d ever seen him,” thanks to the success of his best-selling 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, and massive press tour that followed in early 2023, just months before his death in October 2023.
“His book was such an instant success. He was just really, really, really excited about that, and really proud of that,” said Bowick.
Perry’s close friend David Pressman joked dryly that Perry “would not let me forget” that his book was a huge success. “‘This book is a real big success.’ I was like, ‘I know. Yeah, I know.’ He’s like, ‘But like, really big. Like off the charts.’”
“I still find of solace in the fact that he was happy, he said he was happy, he said he was at peace,” Bowick said.
-
Perry spent around $7 million on rehab, trying to get sober.
Photo: NBC Perry had up to 15 stints in rehab over the course of his life—including one stay in 2001 that caused a pause in production on Friends Season 8— and none of them were cheap.
“He spent about $7 million over his lifetime trying to get sober,” Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, says in Episode 2 of the docuseries. “That number is staggering. It just paints a picture to me of overall how seriously he took his disease and how desperate he was to be sober.”
Perry himself, while doing press for his 2022 book, estimated that number was closer to $9 million.
-
Before his lethal dose, Perry saw ketamine as his savior.
Photo: Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times/ Getty Images Perry died in 2023 by drowning in his hot tub, but an autopsy revealed a lethal dose of ketamine in his system. Perry had been receiving ketamine treatment from doctors at a clinic, and, before his death, it had seemed to him like a miracle cure to his addiction issues.
“He started using it in clinical settings,” Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick recalled. “He was like, ‘This is it. This is helping me.’ He shared that he felt like he had a spiritual experience in the ketamine. That he had seen that we had multiple lives, that he felt like he saw God in the ketamine. […] He’d go get his ketamine injection, and seemed the best he’d ever been. He’s present. He’s showing up. He seems happy.”
But Bowick did not know that her brother was also getting ketamine injections at home, in addition to the clinic.
Ketamine treatment for depression and other mental disorders is legal and can be done safely, but only when administered by a medical professional in a monitored, controlled environment. It is still a controlled and addictive substance. Perry was receiving un-monitored ketamine doses at home administered by his long-time live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who was sentenced to three years and five months in prison earlier this year, in connection to Perry’s death.
“The level of betrayal we all felt,” Perry’s sister said of Iwamasa. “He should have known better. He could have quit his job. He could have told one of the family members. He could have done a lot of different things. He could have made a lot of different choices. I felt really like I had been duped, deeply.”
