Five crucial revelations from ‘The One About Matthew Perry’
Chandler Bing remains etched forever in pop culture, and so does the real man behind the character, the ever-charming Matthew Perry. Although several new sitcoms come and go, Friends is the only show viewers tune in to without a second thought when it comes to comfort watching on Netflix.
Now, that very platform has released the first in-depth documentary, The One About Matthew Perry, offering a look at the late actor’s life, struggles, career, and legacy through the lens of Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick.
Directed by Emmy winner Mary Robertson, the three-part documentary gives off equal parts nostalgia, anecdotes, and emotion, making it the most anticipated watch of the week.
While his devoted fans know him all too well, here are five crucial revelations they may not know if not for Netflix’s The One About Matthew Perry.
Five important revelations from The One About Matthew Perry
Matthew Perry’s addiction started with an on-set injury
The One About Matthew Perry details Matthew Perry’s inclination towards painkillers after an on-set injury during the filming of Fools Rush In. The actor had his first starring role in the 1997 movie, when during lunchtime on location at Lake Mead he went jet skiing. “Matthew got permission to get on a jet ski and flung himself in the air and hurt himself,” the film’s producer, Doug Draizin, recalls in the Netflix documentary.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Perry says in an audio tape. “The doctor gave me a pill in a package and said, ‘Take this when you’re done shooting.’ I did, and then I felt this incredible euphoria. So, why wouldn’t I take more?”
“Who knows what would have happened if that accident didn’t happen,” Draizin adds.
Chandler and Monica’s wedding in Friends was shot during a sensitive time
One of the most emotional revelations from the three-part Netflix docuseries about Matthew Perry is that Chandler and Monica’s wedding in the seventh season of Friends was filmed when the actor was moving in and out of rehab. Per his sister, Mia Perry Bowick, both sides of his family came to see the taping, and the event underscored far greater significance given Perry’s health and “the conviction with which he delivered his lines.”
“The unspoken truth that we all were sitting with in some way or another was, ‘Is this his wedding?’” she says. “When Matthew said his vows to her, the emotion in his eyes and everything was so real.”
Matthew Perry opened the doors for a friend on the brink of relapse
Matthew Perry met Tim Harrington at a recovery meeting in 2001. Harrington reveals in the Netflix series they’d listen to ‘Drops of Jupiter’ by Train every morning. But there was a time when he was almost about to relapse and was ready to live out of his car. Yet, the Friends actor never let him.
“Matthew’s like, ‘No, you’re not.’ And he’s like, ‘You can go get your stuff, but you’re moving in with me,” Harrington recalled. “He saved my life right there in my moment. I believe that.”
Director Mary Robertson adds, “Matthew helped so many people who were in recovery, both through his public-facing and private actions.” “I’m so lucky that his once-upon-a-time really close friend Tim Harrington chose to participate in the documentary.”
Matthew Perry struggled with a terrifying ruptured colon in 2018
The One About Matthew Perry recounts one of the most horrifying episodes of the star’s life in 2018 that left him comatose with a ruptured colon and sepsis. He was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. In footage featured in the Netflix documentary, Perry recalls the near-death experience.
“I was given a 2% chance to survive the night… They put you on an ECMO machine when it’s a Hail Mary, and five people were on ECMO that night, and the other four died, and I somehow made it,” he said.
Mia Perry Bowick continued, “This is the exact same ICU that I had just checked out of after giving birth about six weeks earlier.” Bowick was named Perry’s power of attorney at the crucial hour, and she says, “In some ways, I was really honoured to get to be the person to make these sorts of choices for my brother. But I also felt this really intense anxiety, and pressure, and… [was] barely functioning.”
Matthew Perry’s death “wasn’t just tragic; it was criminal”
On October 28th, 2023, when news broke about Matthew Perry’s death in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home, most people assumed he died of natural causes. “The story that most of us were thinking had happened was that he’d had a heart attack while sitting in his jacuzzi. But we were all waiting on an autopsy report,” Mia Perry Bowick says in the documentary.
According to the report, Perry allegedly died from the acute effects of ketamine. The third part of the series focuses on the federal investigation into those who reportedly supplied the ketamine responsible for Perry’s demise, which, per E Martin Estrada, the former US attorney who dealt with the case, is a “broad underground criminal network.”
The documentary reveals that Perry pursued a new supply of the drug from Drs Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, which he used recreationally after being initially prescribed clinically. Estrada appears in the docuseries, name-dropping Jasveen Sangha, a woman who “cultivated this glamorous persona as this ketamine queen” and sold “the dosage of ketamine that ultimately resulted in the death of Mr Perry” via an intermediary, Erik Fleming.
Estrada also adds that Kenny Iwamasa, Perry’s live-in assistant, “at times was the conduit for obtaining ketamine, at other times was the person who actually administered it.”
Plasencia received two and a half years in federal prison in 2025, with Chavez receiving eight months of home detention. Both allegedly surrendered their medical licenses. Meanwhile, Fleming was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and Sangha to 15 years in federal prison in 2026. In May of the same year, Iwamasa received a sentence of three years and five months.