$7 million sobriety battle: Matthew Perry’s sister speaks out in new docuseries

In the first trailer for The One About Matthew Perry, Matthew Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, puts hard numbers and real emotion to the struggle her brother carried alongside Chandler Bing’s jokes. The three-part Netflix docuseries includes Bowick speaking directly about the cost of his recovery efforts and the emptiness he battled even at the height of his fame.

“My brother would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.”

“He spent $7 million trying to get sober. That’s how seriously he took his disease.”

The trailer also nods to how performing grounded Perry through the worst of it, a throughline he often shared publicly. Over the years, he said he’d been to treatment 15 times, and he used his platform to push for recovery resources and help others navigate addiction.

Perry died on October 28, 2023, at 54. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, citing the acute effects of ketamine; drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine were listed as contributing factors.

Who you’ll hear from

• Mia Perry Bowick — Matthew Perry’s sister
• David Pressman and Roger Castillo — close friends
• Several of Perry’s ex-girlfriends
• Warren Littlefield — former NBC president, sharing the story of Perry’s Friends audition
• Jeff Strauss — Friends season-one writer, on the making of Chandler Bing

Directed by Emmy winner Mary Robertson (Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV; June), the docuseries is pitched as an unvarnished, personal portrait built from the people who knew Perry on and off set. Expect fresh behind-the-scenes stories from the early Friends days and candid accounts of his long fight with substance use.

The One About Matthew Perry is a three-part series streaming on Netflix starting October 27, timed to the three-year mark of Perry’s passing.