When we meet Matthew Perry in a new three-part series on Netflix, the “Friends” star is in his early 20s, strapped for cash and waiting for his big break.
“I haven’t prayed often,” Perry says in one of the many old interviews used in the documentary. “But I made a prayer and I said, ‘God, you can do anything you want to me, just please make me famous.’”
“The One About Matthew Perry,” which arrived on the streaming service Tuesday, comes out nearly three years after the actor died at 54 from the “acute effects” of ketamine. Several individuals involved with Perry’s death, including physician Salvador Plasencia and drug dealer Jasveen Sangha, have been sentenced.
The series doesn’t focus on the legal proceedings that followed or take a true-crime approach to the events that led to the actor’s death. Director Mary Robertson instead follows Perry’s life as he swung between career highs and stints in rehab facilities.
For the series, Robertson interviewed a handful of Perry’s closest friends and his sister, Mia Perry Bowick. The cast of “Friends” decided not to participate in the series.
Here’s what to know.
A quick ride to extreme fame
Perry’s prayer was quickly answered when he joined “Friends” as the youngest addition to the main cast. Warren Littlefield, then president of NBC Entertainment, recalls how Perry seemed perfect for the role almost immediately: “It took less than thirty seconds to feel the, ‘Oh yeah, this is it, this is Chandler.’”
The actor’s friends in Hollywood felt that Perry — a class-clownish young man with romantic insecurities — was similar to the role that would eventually define him. “It was about a guy who was, sort of, trying to distract everybody from how miserable he was all the time by being funny,” Perry says in an old interview.
“Friends” premiered in 1994 between “Mad About You” and “Seinfeld,” a signal of NBC’s confidence in the show. It was an almost immediate hit, with Perry incorporating slapstick influences such as Dick Van Dyke and Chevy Chase into his performance as Chandler.
He also told the “Friends” writers that he struggled in the dating world, which they worked into the show. “They said, ‘Well, you know what, that’ll be funny,’” Perry is shown saying at a Q&A with the “Friends” cast. “‘We’ll take advantage of that horrible thing in your own life and put it on national television for millions of people to see.’”
He spent millions on treatment
Perry’s sister, Bowick, had seen tabloids discuss his substance abuse issues, but she didn’t believe Perry had an issue until her parents told her that he was in rehab.
While shooting the 1997 rom-com “Fools Rush In,” Perry injured himself on a Jet Ski. “A doctor gave me a pill in a package and said, ‘Take this when you’re done shooting,’” Perry says of his first experience with Vicodin. “I did and then I felt this incredible euphoria.”
As Perry’s withdrawals grew worse, starring in “Friends” became more difficult. His family grew concerned when Perry was starting work on an indie film, “Serving Sara,” in 2000. Production was paused so Perry could go to rehab.
“I decided that I needed to risk all the bad publicity, I needed to leave the movie, I needed to leave the TV show and I needed to go get help,” Perry says. “Because it got to the point where I was wondering if I was going to survive.”
Perry typically would struggle to make it a year sober, Bowick says, before coming back to alcohol or drugs. In 2011, he returned to rehab, a stint that prevented him from attending the wedding of Roger Castillo, a close friend Perry had known for decades.
“He spent about $7 million over his lifetime trying to get sober,” Bowick says in “The One About Matthew Perry.” While doing press for his 2022 autobiography, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry said the number was closer to $9 million.
Perry’s family knew one of the individuals charged for decades
Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s live-in assistant who was charged and sentenced with distributing ketamine, had long been in the actor’s orbit. He had worked as an assistant to Perry’s manager, Doug Chapin, for 30 years. Bowick remembers meeting Iwamasa when she was a child.
“The level of betrayal we all felt — he should have known better,” Bowick says of Iwamasa. “He could have quit his job, he could have come and told one of the family members, he could have done a lot of different things. He could have made a lot of different choices.”
Iwamasa was paid $150,000 a year to assist Perry. In his plea agreement, he said he purchased unlicensed ketamine from several sources. He’s currently serving a 3 1/2-year sentence in prison.
“With people like that in your orbit, who are taking advantage of your addiction and your wealth,” says David Pressman, one of Perry’s oldest friends, “I don’t think [Perry] stood much of a chance.”
Struggling to break out as a dramatic actor
In 2004, the finale of “Friends” aired, with 52 million viewers tuning in. In response, Perry sought out dramatic roles and independent films, landing a part in Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” which premiered in 2006 and lasted for a single season. “We were stuck in a show that just didn’t work,” Perry says.
For ABC, he created and starred in “Mr. Sunshine,” a show set in a sports arena that lasted for half of a season. “The disappointment of these shows not working after ‘Friends’ is also very tangled up in his health,” Bowick says. “There was no way for him to really know this, but there was an assumption, ‘If I were able to stay more well, maybe some of these projects would have gone differently.’”
Bowick considers “The End of Longing,” a play Perry wrote about recovery that debuted in London’s West End in 2016, to be his masterpiece. Jonathan Lynn, a director who worked with Perry on 2000’s “The Whole Nine Yards,” agrees that the script was strong. But he grew worried about Perry after saying hello backstage.
“I felt I was looking at the wreckage of what could have been an extraordinary, successful career and a very happy man,” Lynn says. “But he was a prisoner of his addiction.”
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