“The One About Matthew Perry” most shocking revelations: Overdoses, car accidents, and more
Photo of Matthew Perry as shown in Netflix’s ‘The One About Matthew Perry’Credit: NetflixKey Points
Matthew Perry’s friends and family reflect on the Emmy nominee’s life in and out of the spotlight in Netflix’s new docuseries.
The One About Matthew Perry hits the streamer Oct. 27, coinciding with the third anniversary of the Friends star’s death.
Perry died on Oct. 28, 2023. He was 54.
Matthew Perry’s loved ones are pulling back the curtain on the beloved Friends star’s life in a new Netflix docuseries.
Beyond his beloved role as Chandler Bing, fans got to know Perry through his bestselling 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he offered a strikingly unvarnished look at his decades-long battle with substance abuse. Perry suffered a fatal ketamine overdose on Oct. 28, 2023, nearly a year after the book’s release. He was 54.
The One About Matthew Perry hits the streamer on Oct. 27, nearly three years to the day since the five-time Emmy nominee’s death. The three-part series, helmed by Mary Robertson, features Perry’s family and friends — including those who credit him with saving their lives — offering their takes on him and his legacy, on and off-screen.
Below are seven things we learned.
(L-R) Roger Castillo, Matthew Perry, and David Pressman in photo shown in Netflix’s ‘The One About Matthew Perry’Credit: Netflix“A lot of near misses”
In 2018, opiates slowed down Perry’s digestive tract so much that he was hospitalized in the ICU for a ruptured colon and suffered “intense sepsis throughout his entire body,” his younger sister, Mia Perry Bowick, reveals. At one point, she says, he was even comatose.
“We’ve had a lot of near misses,” Perry Bowick notes. “There’s been overdoses, there’s been car accidents. There’s been all sorts of stuff.”
Earlier in the doc, Perry’s close friend, Marjorie Harris Newman, recalls him running a red light while drunk, causing an accident in the late 1980s. “He was horrified,” she says. “Matthew was drunk. I think about it differently now than I did at the time.”
Still, Perry Bowick says the 2018 hospitalization “was the only time that there were a lot of people going, ‘We have no idea if he’s coming out of this thing.’” The actor was hospitalized for three months, after which “he was still in really, really bad shape,” with a “completely open wound in his gut” and a colostomy bag.
“He aged 20 years in three months,” Perry Bowick adds. “He could barely walk—twenty-four-seven nurses. Sober companions. Just constantly surrounded by people caring for him.”
Still, once Perry made it out of the woods, his sister says she was “cautiously optimistic,” hoping that “maybe this was that wake-up call” her brother needed.
The family’s relationship to Kenneth Iwamasa
Perry Bowick also sheds light on Perry’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, a former longtime assistant to Perry’s manager.
“Kenny was always kind of chatting and hanging out, and spending time with us and getting to know us,” says Perry Bowick, who was a child when she met Iwamasa. Her eyes begin welling up with tears as she continues, “We all really liked him...And we all really, really trusted him.”
She adds that the family was “really happy” when Iwamasa began working with Perry after his 2018 medical crisis.
“We thought it was a really good fit,” she says. “Matthew really, really trusted him. They were together every single day.”
In August 2024, Iwamasa was charged with having administered Perry with what proved to be a fatal dose of ketamine. He was one of five people — among them two doctors and a drug dealer — charged in Perry’s death.
Iwamasa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. This May, he was sentenced to three years and five months in prison, two years’ probation, and a $10,000 fine.
Matthew Perry in Netflix’s ‘The One About Matthew Perry’Credit: NetflixThe gravity of Chandler’s wedding
Perry was still in and out of rehab when his Friends character, Chandler, married Courteney Cox’s Monica in season 7. Given his ongoing struggles, the actor’s sister, who attended the taping, says an “unspoken truth” hung over the occasion: it might be the closest the family would come to watching Perry walk down the aisle.
“It was a really big deal because we’re all worried about him. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” Perry Bowick shares. She even recalls thinking: “Is this his wedding?”
While everything felt “real,” Perry Bowick notes that there was nothing romantic between the costars. “Him and Courteney had such a lovely relationship and years working through this thing that there was so clearly actual love there. Platonic love, but love,” she says.
Elsewhere in the documentary, Perry’s longtime friends David Pressman and Roger Castillo share more about Perry’s approach to dating, with the former saying the actor “knew how to charm” women. Castillo recalls that Perry “would move on quickly” from relationships, even serious ones, only to “regret” it.
Among Perry’s ex-girlfriends in the documentary is a woman named Rome, who says, “Intimacy was his greatest wish and biggest fear.”
Preparing for the Friends reunion
Though he hadn’t been in public since 2018 because of his health struggles, Perry decided to join the 2021 Friends reunion.
Perry Bowick says her brother seemed “very nervous” about participating. “I think he wanted to be like, ‘I’m here, I’m good, everything is fine,’ which was only sort of like, half-true at that point. He was very much on the mend,” she explains.
Longtime friend Kevin Pollak, who Perry met on the set of Friends, says he felt “a lot of pressure” around the reunion. “He hadn’t been on camera in a while,” Pollak says. “It’s tough to watch, ’cause he’s just not himself.”
Perry Bowick shares that after the reunion, Perry felt “relieved,” “really tired,” and “really scared.”
Courteney Cox Arquette and Matthew Perry on ‘Friends’Credit: Everett CollectionPerry’s war with himself
Though Perry Bowick says she held on to some glimmer of hope for her brother after the reunion, she admits that in many ways, she “did not think it was possible for him to live a sober life.”
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Looking back, Pressman felt his friend “was just so frustrated, and angry and sad, that he couldn’t beat” addiction.
“He did not feel that it was okay to say that he wasn’t doing well,” says Evelyn Sallinger, who met Perry at a concierge treatment facility in 2017.
She believes that “shame is at the center of all of this,” with Perry’s resources and abundance of yes-men creating a “perfect storm.”
Jonathan Lynn — who directed Perry in 2000’s The Whole Nine Yards — regards the actor as “a prisoner of his addiction.”
When visiting the actor backstage after a 2015 performance of The End of Longing, which he wrote, Lynn says he observed “the wreckage of what could have been an extraordinary career and a happy man.”
Matthew Perry on ‘Friends’Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via GettyFriends cast attends Perry’s funeral
At Perry’s funeral, the “rest of the Friends cast all walked in together,” his sister recalls. “And I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years.”
She says Jennifer Aniston was the first of the surviving fivesome — including Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow — to approach her “and give me a huge hug. But they all did.”
Perry Bowick says the actors all held hands as they walked up to Perry’s casket “and stood around him crying.”
Source: Crime
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