Netflix Drops Trailer for Matthew Perry Documentary

Netflix released the first trailer on September 29 for The One About Matthew Perry, a Matthew Perry documentary arriving October 27, one day before the third anniversary of the actor's death at 54 in October 2023. The title is a direct nod to the way Friends named its episodes, and the series itself looks past Chandler Bing to the life around him, according to NME.

A family archive opens up

The Matthew Perry documentary trailer mixes previously unseen family photographs and home videos with new interviews, reported by NME. Perry's younger sister, Mia Perry Bowick, speaks about her brother on camera for the first time. Longtime friends Roger Castillo and David Pressman also appear. Castillo's connection to Perry stretches back more than four decades, and he was the one who drove Perry to the Friends audition that changed his life, per MovieGeak.

Former colleagues show up too. The Whole Nine Yards costar Kevin Pollak, Billy Gallo, former NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield and Friends season one writer Jeff Strauss all appear. Former prosecutor E. Martin Estrada walks through the criminal case that followed Perry's overdose death, reported by TheWrap. Each episode runs about fifty minutes, and the whole documentary draws on the family's private archive for material fans have never seen.

Addiction, fame and what fans remember

The trailer does not skip the hard parts. It opens with Perry repeating the prayer he made before his audition: "God, you can do anything you want to me, just please make me famous." He describes the phone call that followed as the moment he knew his whole life was about to change, then adds the quieter coda that fame did not fix what was going on inside him.

His sister then puts a figure on his fight to get sober, saying he spent seven million dollars trying, and adding that it shows how seriously he took his disease, reported by Entertainment Weekly. "All great stories have comedy and tragedy in them, and that certainly was Matthew's story," she says in the footage, per Page Six. The trailer closes with a Late Show with Stephen Colbert clip from the year he died, in which Perry tells the cheering audience how much he missed them.

Beyond Friends, the Matthew Perry documentary revisits the rest of his acting life: Fools Rush In, his turn on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and his stage writing and starring role in The End of Longing. It also traces the advocacy work that became central to his later years, when he pushed publicly for better treatment options for people living with addiction. Perry turned his own relapse and recovery into a cause, and the series gives that chapter major space in his story, per MovieGeak.

The trailer's timing is deliberate. The release sits almost exactly on the anniversary of Perry's death, a date that still draws annual tributes from fans who grew up quoting Chandler Bing. For a generation that treats Friends as background comfort, the question the trailer leaves hanging is whether hours of unseen footage can say anything genuinely new about a story that has been told and retold since his death. If the response to the trailer is any guide, plenty of viewers are ready to find out.

Fans reacted fast and hard. One viewer wrote "This is going to destroy me," and others called the footage "heartbreaking," according to NME's roundup of reactions, which noted how difficult the Matthew Perry documentary will be to watch. Perry detailed his addiction in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, and the series draws on that record for its portrait of his recovery advocacy in his later years.

The Matthew Perry documentary is directed by Emmy winner Mary Robertson, co-director of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. It comes from Maxine Productions, part of Sony Pictures Television, with Robertson executive producing alongside Lisa Kalikow, Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman, reported by TheWrap.