Netflix has set an Oct. 27 premiere for “The One About Matthew Perry,” a three-part documentary series on the late “Friends” star, and released a trailer for it on Sept. 29. The title borrows the naming style of the sitcom, whose episodes carried titles that began with “The One.” Perry played Chandler Bing across the show’s run on NBC, a role that made him one of the most familiar comic actors of his era.
The series traces Perry’s life and career along with his long struggle with addiction and his efforts to get sober. It draws on interviews with people close to him, and it includes family photographs and video that have not been released before. Netflix has framed the project as an account of both his fame and the private battles that ran alongside it, told largely by those who knew him away from the camera.
Mia Perry Bowick, the actor’s sister, appears in the documentary and speaks about the scale of his effort to recover. “He spent $7 million trying to get sober,” she says in the trailer. “That’s how seriously he took his disease.” Her account anchors a portrait that reaches beyond Perry’s best-known role.
Perry died in 2023 at age 54 following an accidental overdose. His sister has said the documentary is meant to deepen viewers’ appreciation of who he was and the mark he left behind. The three episodes lean on the recollections of friends and family to move past the headlines that followed him and toward a fuller account of his life.
The documentary arrives about three years after Perry’s death and joins a wave of Netflix projects examining well-known entertainers. “Friends,” which ran from 1994 to 2004, turned its six leads into some of the most recognizable faces on television, and Perry’s Chandler was among its most quoted characters. The sitcom has kept a large audience through streaming in the years since it ended, introducing the show to viewers who were not born when it first aired. The Oct. 27 release will test continued interest in the series and its cast more than two decades after the finale.
