Matthew Perry's sister says the Friends wedding scene was bittersweet for her family

A bittersweet wedding scene

Mia Perry Bowick, the sister of actor Matthew Perry, has described how the Friends wedding episode affected her family. In an interview with People, she said relatives knew the on-screen marriage reflected what her brother wanted in his own life: a partner and children. The wedding of Monica Geller and Chandler Bing, played by Courteney Cox and Perry, closed the seventh season in 2001. Bowick said the family had been invited to the studio to watch the shoot, and that they all understood how serious his disorder was, which left a constant sense of uncertainty. Perry was in his early thirties at the time and had already faced years of health problems.

Bowick said the storyline gave Perry room beyond the comedy he was known for:

He was not just silly Chandler anymore. It opened up a lot of new avenues with his acting in terms of being tender and romantic and vulnerable.

She added that the family had long known how much he wanted that kind of romance in his own life.

I think we all really knew how much Matthew wanted that too.

What Perry wrote about the wedding

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote that he was taken back to a treatment centre as soon as filming of the wedding scene ended. He travelled in a pickup truck driven by a sober technician. The memoir also described how his drinking began at 14 and how the addiction deepened once he reached Hollywood. He wrote that a 1996 jet ski accident led to dependence on the painkiller Vicodin. Those years of struggle ran in parallel with the most successful period of the sitcom, which ran from 1994 to 2004 across ten seasons.

The documentary and its premiere

The One About Matthew Perry is a three-part Netflix series directed by Mary Robertson. It premieres on 27 October, one day before the third anniversary of Perry's death. The series draws on family archives, home videos and photographs, along with testimony from Bowick, a psychotherapist, author and speaker, and from friends who knew him for years. The five remaining Friends cast members declined to take part, leaving the family and close friends to share their own observations. Bowick says her brother spent $7 million trying to get sober, which she presents as evidence of how seriously he treated his disease.

Death and legal aftermath

Perry died aged 54 in October 2023 at his home in Los Angeles. His death was ruled an accident caused by the acute effects of ketamine, a drug he had first started using to treat depression. He never married and had no children. The Independent reports that five people have been charged in connection with his death, including Jasveen Sangha, who has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. The documentary's family testimony arrives three years after his death, with the premiere set for 27 October.