Three weeks before winning his signature role as Chandler Bing in “Friends” and after several years of struggling to make a mark in Hollywood, actor Matthew Perry prayed, “God, you can do whatever you want to me; just please make me famous.”
In retrospect, the prayer takes on a sobering irony. Fame was the answer Perry thought he wanted. Netflix’s three-part documentary, “The One About Matthew Perry,” spends its running time examining everything fame could — and couldn’t — solve.
Perry died on Oct. 28, 2023, at age 54, after the acute effects of ketamine caused him to lose consciousness and drown in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home. Rather than treating that tragedy as a final twist, the docuseries views it as the culmination of a decades-long struggle that saw Perry carom between addiction and recovery, and back again.
Premiering Tuesday, just before the third anniversary of his death, the project traces Perry’s journey from precocious teenager to breakout television star, sitcom icon and, ultimately, tragic figure. Across three hourlong episodes, it presents a life encompassing friendship, faith, ambition, service and a generosity seemingly at odds with the chaos of his private life.
Built around testimony from Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, a small cadre of lifelong friends, former romantic partners and a number of professional collaborators, the series sometimes feels like a group of people trying to keep a complicated friend from being flattened into a headline. Notably, none of Perry’s “Friends” co-stars appear in new footage, though their presence is felt throughout via archival interviews.
Bowick in particular, speaking about him on camera for the first time, lets the audience see her brother as she knew him: Matty. Not merely the beloved sitcom star or the man whose addiction ultimately consumed his life, but someone capable of both profound kindness and devastating self-destruction. That generosity is especially striking because Perry’s career was never limited to Chandler Bing, even if Chandler and “Friends” were what turned him into a singular superstar the likes of which is difficult to even fathom today.
Though Perry moved between films, single-camera comedies and dramatic roles, he was never quite able to escape Chandler’s shadow. That’s partly because the character was such an extraordinary showcase of what he could do.
While Chandler was initially the show’s comedy escape hatch who could puncture any moment before it became too sincere, Perry eventually made the character’s evasiveness feel like vulnerability. That helps explain why Perry was so excited when Chandler and Monica became a couple.
The storyline let him play tender, vulnerable and sincere without surrendering any of Chandler’s comic rhythm. For Perry, that turn represented an opportunity to be seen as more than “the funny one,” which seems like a pretty good thing to be. But therein lies the perennial paradox of the creative soul.
Of course, that go-for-broke humor was inseparable from his insecurities. Although his wit and physicality could dazzle and disarm (something former NBC honcho Warren Littlefield says he felt the first time he saw Perry audition for Chandler), those same traits also served as a suit of armor, turning fear into control and embarrassment into performance. The documentary is naturally at its most nostalgic when discussing “Friends,” but it smartly avoids making Chandler the entire story.
Indeed, the most affecting moments occur when focusing on the people Perry helped during his own periods of recovery, such as Tim Harrington, a friend Perry met at an Alcoholics Anonymous gathering in 2001, when Harrington was nearly homeless and convinced he had no future. Perry invited him to move into his palatial home, and the two men became roommates and recovery companions, spending months going to as many as three meetings a day while trying to build lives around sobriety.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a devoted, lifelong Batman fan, Perry wanted to be remembered not simply as a cautionary tale of excess, but as someone who used whatever power he had to help others. Converting his Malibu home into a sober-living facility, he advocated for drug court reform and spoke openly about addiction, hoping his experience might make recovery more visible and show others a way forward.
The docuseries’ treatment of the 2021 “Friends” reunion on HBO Max is especially painful. Perry’s unsteady gait, subdued appearance and slurred speech prompted social media speculation, but the Netflix doc adds welcome context. Intended as a celebration of a beloved show and cast, the special was, for those close to Perry, bracing evidence of how far he’d traveled and the toll that journey had taken.
Following his passing, one of the most moving sequences in the series comes when Bowick remembered seeing his “Friends” co-stars — David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox — walking in together and encircling his casket, holding hands and crying as they looked at their beloved castmate one last time.
It’s a fascinating portrait of the odd intimacy TV can manufacture. Millions of people the world over knew the rhythm of this friendship, but very few knew the man at its center or the depth of his connection to his co-stars.
Then, as his body was sealed in a mausoleum, Bowick recalled imagining her brother leaning over her shoulder and making a crude joke. She began to laugh. It’s a perfect Matthew Perry memory, not merely because it’s sad, but because it’s funny at the exact wrong moment.
By no means a definitive account of his career (nor does it try to be), “The One About Matthew Perry” instead allows his friends, family and admirers to remember the whole, complicated person: a gifted comedian, an ambitious kid, a loyal friend, a generous advocate.
When Matthew Perry asked to be famous, he got his wish more completely than he could ever have imagined. But the totality of this documentary suggests his fame was never the most meaningful thing he experienced or left behind. His lasting legacy can be found in the people who felt less alone because he made them laugh, and in the people who survived because, at some point, he reached out and said: Come live with me. We’ll try to get through this together.
“The One About Matthew Perry” is now streaming on Netflix.