A new documentary about the life and career of Matthew Perry has arrived on Netflix, on the third anniversary of his death.
The three-part doc The One About Matthew Perry features interviews with the late Friends star’s loved ones, including contributions from his sister, Mia Perry Bowick.
While Netflix’s original documentaries can notoriously be a little hit-and-miss, especially when dealing with sensitive issues, the reception to The One About Matthew Perry has been largely positive so far.
In particular, critics have been praising the contributions from those who really knew Matthew outside of his celebrity status – even if, admittedly, it isn’t the most revelatory of documentaries.
Here’s a quick selection of what early reviews had to say about the doc…
“I didn’t expect to react strongly to The One About Matthew Perry, but his sister Mia Perry Bowick is a captivating and unflinching interviewee.
“Ahead of watching the documentary, I couldn’t really understand why she had agreed to take part and what good could come from it. But she does an incredible job by balancing her words to pay tribute to a brother she loved dearly, at the same time as also explaining the difficulties and pain of him struggling and battling with addiction.
“[The One About Matthew Perry is] a challenging and heartbreaking series.”
“It remains at heart a simple, sad story. But this unexpectedly candid, thoughtful, genuinely intimate film gives it nuance and depth, and gives a voice to wider sorrows – including what a shame it was that Perry could not enjoy his talent or appreciate the joy it gave as fully as his audiences always did.”
“What emerges in place of star power is a more intimate portrait of Perry and his decades-long struggle with substance abuse, leading to his death from a ketamine overdose in the fall of 2023.
“Through friends, family, fellow addicts and former partners, what emerges is a straightforwardly told, crushingly sad story of a man whose talent, humour and success were not enough to overcome a chronic disease.”
“What marks this series out is the quality of interviewee, the people who really knew him, long before he was famous.
“It feels as if we are getting the full, complete picture; Matthew Perry in the round, a man who was likeable, self-deprecating, hugely generous and considerate to his friends but who was also afraid of intimacy, the thing that, ironically, he craved most. In the end he could not beat the big beast of addiction on his back.”
“It’s a sincere, generally non-exploitative examination of addiction and celebrity — but not from Perry’s perspective, since Perry wrote a bestselling memoir that covered all of that. Instead, it’s about addiction and celebrity as viewed from slightly outside the celebrity bubble.
“[Had director Mary Robertson] been able to trim The One About Matthew Perry down to a 100-minute feature-length doc that didn’t find the basics so necessary to include, it probably would have been a better project. I’m not sure I learned anything at all about Perry here, but the documentary’s heart is with the people still struggling with what they did or didn’t know and what they could or couldn’t do when it came to Perry’s life and death.”
“The problem with The One About Matthew Perry is that it is not the only one about Matthew Perry. He wrote a very good ‘one’ himself, his 2024 memoir Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing, which sold by the truckload. Throughout his fame he went on every late-night talk show to discuss his addictions, and everything he chose not to share was shared for him anyway in tabloids, in gossip columns and online.
“[As a result,] The One About Matthew Perry is a tragic tale but a familiar one. From what we learn here about ‘Matty’, as his friends called him, one suspects that he would have much preferred the attention and indeed the production budget to be given to other addicts and other sufferers like him.”
The One About Matthew Perry is now streaming on Netflix.
