Matthew Perry’s family is providing new heartbreaking details about his private funeral following his tragic 2023 death.
Mary Robertson, the director of the Netflix documentary “The One About Matthew Perry,” exclusively told Page Six that one of her favorite parts of the new three-episode series is when Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick describes the memorial.
She noted that Bowick’s account of the sad day was “wrenching and harrowing.”
Bowick also recalled a sweet moment when she started laughing in the middle of the funeral because she felt him with her.
“He showed up right behind my right shoulder and goes, ‘How f–ked up is this?’” his sister recalls in the doc.
“And I started laughing so hard. I was like, ‘Oh my god — there he is!’ Making me laugh at the most horrible moment, and also incredibly inappropriate for me to start laughing … But I just started cracking up. And I was like, ‘Yeah man, this is pretty f–ked up,’” she says.
Robertson told us that it’s fairly common to laugh at funerals, adding it doesn’t diminish Bowick’s grief.
“I think that is true to Matthew’s lived experience, true to Mathews’s legacy, and true to our experience as humans,” The Emmy-winning director said.
In “The One About Matthew Perry,” Bowick recalls being at the funeral and watching as the rest of the ‘Friends’ cast walked in together.
“I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years. [Jennifer] Aniston was the first one of them to come up to me and give me a huge hug. But, they all did,” Bowick says of the cast, which includes Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc.
Bowick adds, “And then, all five of them walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around him, crying.”
Neither the “Friends” actors nor Perry’s other family members appear in the new documentary, which chronicles Perry’s rise to fame, his time on the hit sitcom, his relationships, his struggles with addiction, and his devastating death at age 54.
Per the autopsy, he died from the “acute effects of ketamine” and the manner was accidental drowning.
“I know the ‘Friends’ actors love Matthew, and grieve Matthew. We did ask them if they would participate, and they decided not to,” Robertson told Page Six.
She said there’s no hard feelings for the “Friends” actors or for his family members who declined to participate, including his stepfather, “Dateline” correspondent Keith Morrison.
“I think everyone grieves in their own way. And I understand why someone might feel that this isn’t the moment to talk,” she said.
The director explained, “And I understand Mia felt that this was absolutely the moment when she should be sharing this really raw and open and vulnerable and powerful and funny account of loving her brother.”
A source previously told Page Six that Aniston would never sit down for a documentary like that because she “doesn’t want to relive it and have it be so public.”
“The One About Matthew Perry” premieres Tuesday, Oct. 27 on Netflix.
The post Matthew Perry’s ‘harrowing’ private funeral detailed for the first time in new doc appeared first on Page Six.
