The heartbreaking reason the Friends cast refused to join Matthew Perry's Netflix doc
Five people who knew Matthew Perry best said no to the documentary about him. They're in it anyway, through his sister's memory of a funeral.
The One About Matthew Perry premiered on Netflix on October 27, a day before the third anniversary of Perry's death at 54 from the acute effects of ketamine. It runs three episodes, is directed by Mary Robertson of Quiet on Set, and is produced by Sony's Maxine Productions. On camera: his sister Mia Perry Bowick, speaking publicly for the first time, plus friends, ex-girlfriends and recovery peers. Not on camera: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. Robertson told USA TODAY why:
"I know that the cast of 'Friends' loves Matthew and is grieving him."
— Mary Robertson, director, to USA TODAY
To Gold Derby she was blunter: the team reached out, and the cast declined.
What they'd have been asked about
Grief is the official reason, and the content of the series explains why grief would be enough. The doc covers Perry's addiction, his rehab stays, the 2018 colon rupture that nearly killed him, and the ketamine investigation after his death, in which five people have pleaded guilty and been sentenced for supplying him. Robertson got interested in Perry through his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the book where he wrote about drinking and using through the Friends years, and about Aniston confronting him over it.
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Page Six got the shortest version from a source close to Aniston:
"She doesn't want to relive it."
— a source close to Jennifer Aniston, to Page Six
The aggregators went with "stunning snub." It's a hard sell. The five have exactly one joint statement on the record, released October 30, 2023, two days after his death ("We were more than just cast mates. We are a family"), plus five individual tributes, from LeBlanc's Joey-style promise to keep the $20 he owed to Kudrow calling the show the best ten years a person gets to have. In three years, none of them has added a word in public. Sitting down with the director of Quiet on Set to talk about a federal drug case would have been a very loud first word.
Grief is the stated reason. A documentary about addiction and a ketamine prosecution is the unstated one.
They show up anyway
The doc's most devastating moment with the cast comes from someone who never stopped talking to them. Mia describes the funeral: small, family and close friends only, the first time she'd seen the Friends cast in about 20 years. Aniston hugged her first, then all of them did. Then the five walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around it, crying.
None of the five sat for an interview. Their scene in the documentary is the one Mia remembers: five people at his casket, holding hands.
Getting Mia was a long shot. Robertson's team sent her a letter and expected nothing back.
"I screamed when she wrote back."
— Mary Robertson, director
The audience didn't need them
Without its most famous potential interviewees, the doc still opened at No. 1 on Netflix's English TV list with 9.5 million views for October 26–November 1, and Samba named it the most-watched streaming program of the week. Week two brought 4.4 million views and No. 2, behind only the Natalee Holloway series.
Friends itself streams on HBO Max, so the version of Perry most viewers know lives on a different service from the documentary about him. The cast has made its choice about which one it wants to be part of.
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