There are not a lot of famous people in “The One About Matthew Perry.” None of the late actor’s beloved “Friends” castmates sat down to be interviewed for the three-part Netflix docuseries. Neither did Perry’s longtime friend and “Simpsons” star Hank Azaria, who knew Perry as a striving young actor in Los Angeles, nor later industry collaborators like Bradley Whitford and Aaron Sorkin.
One could take this notable absence as an indicator of the kind of access that director Mary Robertson, known for her work on “Quiet on Set,” and her production team were or were not able to secure. But whether a matter of deliberate intention or challenging circumstance, what emerges in place of Hollywood star power is a far more intimate and grounded portrait of Perry. The series explores his decades-long, grueling struggle with substance abuse, a battle that ultimately led to his tragic death from a ketamine overdose in the fall of 2023. Through interviews with childhood friends, family members, fellow addicts, and former romantic partners, the project unfolds as a straightforwardly told, crushingly sad story of a man whose immense talent, sharp humor, and global success were simply not enough to overcome the crushing weight of a chronic disease.
The unofficial protagonist of “The One About Matthew Perry” is the actor’s younger half-sister, Mia Perry Bowick. A therapist by profession, Bowick narrates what it was like to share a loved one with the entire world during the absolute peak of the monoculture television era. Bowick is joined in the documentary by Perry’s close friends Roger Castillo and David Pressman. Together, they vividly recall frequent pre-fame nights spent with Perry and Azaria at West Hollywood’s historic Formosa Cafe. The series also features insights from multiple ex-girlfriends and even a member of Gen Z who crossed paths with Perry during one of his numerous stays in rehabilitation facilities. That particular interviewee notes that they partly bonded because of, rather than in spite of, their age gap, recalling she was born in 1997 and felt Perry was not that big a deal to her personally.
While some contributors, such as “The Whole Nine Yards” director Jonathan Lynn, are able to speak directly to Perry’s remarkable artistic ability, most figures in the documentary are there to testify to what the public simply did not see. This hidden reality remained largely obscured until Perry chose to bravely share his start-and-stop road to recovery in venues such as his candid 2022 memoir.
Because of those late-in-life disclosures—which Perry made after fully embracing the potential of his massive platform to help others facing similar battles—there are not many bombshell revelations in “The One About Matthew Perry,” nor is there a vast trove of previously unknown information. An introductory title card explicitly positions the series as the story of Matthew Perry’s life, as told by his family and friends, and by Matthew himself. Though recent developments in media and entertainment have sometimes made audiences fear AI-assisted necromancy or digital recreation, Robertson’s directorial approach is formally straightforward and entirely free of such ill-advised techniques. Instead, the narrative interviews are thoughtfully supplemented with archival clips of Perry’s television and film work, alongside footage from past interviews. Some of the most searing and emotional material in the entire show is conveyed through the actor’s own previously recorded and publicized voice.
Reflecting on his rapid ascent to global stardom, Perry freely admits in archival recordings to praying in his youth, “God, you can do anything you want to me; just please make me famous.” He secured the role of Chandler Bing on “Friends” shortly afterward, but would later ruefully note that God clearly didn’t forget about the first part of that plea. Ultimately, “The One About Matthew Perry” functions much more as a collation of established facts regarding Perry’s well-documented battles—including a harrowing sepsis-induced coma in 2018 resulting from his extensive use of opiates—interwoven with new perspectives. What the project genuinely adds to the public record are raw personal testimonies about witnessing those terrifying battles up close, alongside memorable observations from loved ones, such as the poignant note that intimacy was simultaneously his greatest fear and his greatest wish. Naturally, the most striking and memorable lines of the series—including the observation that reality is an acquired taste—still fittingly belong to Perry himself.
The cultural phenomenon that was “Friends” does have a couple of direct representatives among Robertson’s cast of talking heads, namely writer Jeff Strauss and former NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield. Naturally, it would be impossible to tell the full story of Perry’s life without dwelling extensively on the defining role of his career. However, what “The One About Matthew Perry” achieves is a wider contextualization, situating the sitcom’s historic run—which concludes by the exact halfway point of the docuseries—within the broader narrative of Perry’s life.
The documentary traces his trajectory from a childhood marked by a feeling of drifting between his remarried parents’ respective family units, through the immense pressure of global fame, and onward to attempted professional follow-ups like “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” where addiction increasingly interfered with his daily work. The much-publicized 2021 “Friends” reunion special is presented in the series as a source of immense anxiety for Perry, who was deeply hurt by online comments picking apart his physical appearance and mannerisms. Unbeknownst to viewers at the time who watched the reunion, Perry was still actively recovering from his near-fatal coma and the myriad attendant medical complications that followed.
The generous length of the three-part series allows “The One About Matthew Perry” to fully communicate the protracted, start-and-stop nature of Perry’s lifelong addiction. The narrative traces the cycle from his very first prescription of painkillers following an on-set injury while filming the 1997 romantic comedy film “Fools Rush In,” through countless grueling cycles of relapse, medical detox, and temporary sobriety. Eventually, the documentary addresses the grim, actual circumstances of Perry’s untimely death, which ultimately resulted in multiple criminal convictions for his illicit drug dealers and his live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who personally administered the fatal dose of ketamine.
After hours of deep emotional exploration, the series takes an abrupt, if necessary, detour into factual legal territory through interviews with a former U.S. Attorney detailing the criminal prosecutions. Mia Bowick grounds these stark data points with an impassioned and stinging condemnation of Iwamasa’s enabling behavior, arguing fiercely that he should have alerted family members much sooner to the dangerous escalation of Perry’s ketamine abuse. Ultimately, this reflects the core function of “The One About Matthew Perry”: taking well-known public headlines and reframing them entirely through the lesser-known, deeply protective perspective of the people who knew and loved him best.
All three episodes of “The One About Matthew Perry” are now streaming on Netflix.
