Status: Now Streaming — all 3 episodes now on Netflix.

The series traces the Friends star’s rise to fame across 236 episodes as Chandler Bing, his private addiction battles, his advocacy work, and the honesty that marked his later years. It is built around his younger sister, Mia Perry Bowick, speaking on camera for the first time, alongside lifelong friends, former co-stars and collaborators, and unreleased family archive photos and videos.

Details

Director: Mary Robertson
Production: Maxine Productions (Sony Pictures Television) for Netflix
Executive producers: Mary Robertson, Lisa Kalikow, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman
Featuring: Matthew Perry (archive), Mia Perry Bowick (first on-camera interview), David Pressman, Roger Castillo, Warren Littlefield, Billy Gallo, Doug Draizin, Kevin Pollak
Not appearing: the Friends co-stars — Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer, who reportedly declined
Release: October 27, 2026 (Netflix global, all 3 episodes at once)
Episodes: 3 x about 50 minutes
Netflix title ID: 81970499
Genre: Documentary / docuseries / biography
IMDb: The One About Matthew Perry on IMDb
Netflix: The One About Matthew Perry on Netflix

What His Sister Reveals

Mia Perry Bowick’s first on-camera interview anchors the series, with family archive material offering a view of Perry beyond Chandler Bing — from the fame that came with Friends to the struggles he later spoke about openly and the advocacy work he pursued in his later years.

Critical Reception — Intimate, But Divisive

The first reviews of The One About Matthew Perry agree on one thing and argue about another. What critics praise almost universally is the access: Mia Perry Bowick, Matthew Perry’s younger half-sister, speaks on camera for the first time, and the series is built around family testimony and private archives rather than celebrity talking heads. The scale of Perry’s struggle is put in stark numbers — more than $7 million spent on treatment, 15 stays in rehabilitation, 30 years of therapy and around 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Where reviewers split is on what the series does with that access. The Hollywood Reporter called it intimate and sincere but overly padded, arguing that a feature-length story has been stretched across three hours. Others found it cautious, noting that after two hours of largely admiring testimony, genuinely critical voices barely get a word in — and that viewers who read Perry’s 2022 memoir will find few new revelations. The most talked-about absence is the Friends cast: director Mary Robertson confirmed the five co-stars were approached and declined to be interviewed, so they appear only in archival footage. Whether that makes the portrait more honest or less complete is the question dividing audiences — and it is probably the reason this docuseries, more than most, is worth watching before joining the debate.