In October Netflix will show a three-part documentary film dedicated to Matthew Perry. Its title — “The One About Matthew Perry” — sounds like a nod to an episode of “Friends,” and there is something very apt in that. Because for millions of people Perry remained “the one” — Chandler Bing, whose irony and vulnerability have forever become part of the collective memory.
The series promises to be not a ceremonial portrait of a star, but a conversation about a person. At its centre is the voice of his sister, Mia Perry Bowie. For the first time she will speak publicly about her brother not as a celebrity and not only as a man who battled addiction. But as a complicated, generous, funny and very much alive person whom she knew her whole life. Beside her are long-time friends, those whom Perry called “best friends for life.” Their testimonies will be supplemented by the family archive: footage and photographs that until now no one but those closest to him had seen.
The director Mary Robertson, known for her ability to work with difficult stories, builds the narrative with care. The series promises to show the path from a young comedian who was only just feeling out his own voice to an actor who became part of the cultural code of an entire generation — and further, to those parts of his life that Perry himself chose to make public. His openness in talking about addiction and pain became part of his legacy. Now those close to him continue that conversation without him.
The premiere is scheduled for 27 October 2026 — almost exactly three years after the actor’s death. The choice of date feels deliberate. Not as an anniversary in the usual sense, but as an opportunity to look again, more calmly and more deeply, at a man who gave so much to laughter and fought his own darkness for so long.
“The One About Matthew Perry” does not try to explain everything. Rather, it invites you to spend time alongside those who loved Matthew Perry not for the role, but for who he was. And perhaps that is precisely where its main strength lies.
