Matthew Perry death anniversary: Netflix docuseries shows how Friends star felt not enough since childhood

New Delhi: Three years after his death, Matthew Perry is being remembered through a Netflix docuseries that looks at the loneliness he carried long before Friends made him a star. The One About Matthew Perry, a three-episode series, was released on Tuesday, October 27, one day before the anniversary. Perry died at the age of 54 on October 28, 2023. The series reveals that he first drank alcohol at 14, a moment he recalled as one in which “he felt he was in heaven”.

Matthew Perry’s first drink at 14

In archival footage, Perry spoke about finishing a full bottle at that age. “I thought, ‘This must be the way that normal people feel all the time,’” he said.

His friends did not know at first. His friend Marjorie Harris Newman said in Part 1 of the docuseries that Perry was “secretive” and “would drink alone.” She speculated that alcohol reached “that very deep part of himself that always thought he was not enough.”

“He felt that becoming famous would fill that hole,” she said.

Matthew Perry’s childhood and family

Perry grew up between two families, which fed his sense of inadequacy and made him believe he was ‘too needy.’ “The beliefs that I had were: I was too needy, I wasn’t enough, and I didn’t matter…my whole life was about trying to have those three things not be true,” he said in archival footage.

His parents separated when he was a baby. His father, John Bennett Perry, is also an actor and even appeared on Friends. Talking about those years, Perry said, “The only way I would get to see my father on a regular basis was on television.”

At five, he flew alone from his mother’s home in Montreal to visit his father in Los Angeles. Recalling the journey, he said, “They put a thing on my head that said ‘unescorted minor’ and I was incredibly scared.”

Both parents later started new families. His mother, Suzanne, married Dateline anchor Keith Morrison, and they have four children. His father married Debbie Boyle, and the couple have a daughter, Mia Perry Bowick.

Matthew Perry’s Friends fame and addiction

Perry became a household name as Chandler Bing on Friends, which ran for 10 seasons between 1994 and 2004. The sitcom is still part of popular culture and continues to find new viewers on streaming platforms.

Away from the screen, he fought a severe, decades-long battle with alcohol, prescription opioids and other substances, which he revealed in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The docuseries explores the childhood trauma that allegedly led to his addiction.

Directed by Mary Robertson, who co-directed Quiet on Set, the series features previously unheard accounts from Bowick and long-time friends, along with unreleased photos and videos from the family’s private collection. In a statement on the project, Bowick said she wants people to see him as “a whole person, not just as Chandler”.