Matthew Perry’s funeral: Netflix doc reveals how the Friends cast said goodbye
A new Netflix documentary invites you into the Friends stars’ private goodbye to Matthew Perry, revisiting the grief they kept to themselves.
In the third and final episode of The One About Matthew Perry, Matthew Perry’s sister Mia Perry Bowick shares how the “Friends” family said goodbye: a small, private funeral where the five surviving castmates arrived together and, hand in hand, approached his open casket. Her account anchors the Netflix doc’s most intimate stretch, shifting the focus from the public loss to the people who knew him best.
“At the funeral, we arranged for just the family to have it be open casket for a little while for all of us. The funeral was very small — close friends and family. And then, all five of them walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around him, crying.”
The moment involved the actors who spent a decade alongside Perry on NBC’s hit sitcom. The documentary positions their quiet vigil as a mirror image of the bond fans watched on screen.
- Jennifer Aniston
- Courteney Cox
- Lisa Kudrow
- Matt LeBlanc
- David Schwimmer
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How the struggle hit the set
The series also retraces how Perry’s addiction bled into work at the height of “Friends.” According to close friend Roger Costillo, filming paused in 2001 so Perry could start rehab.
“They had to shut down production for a while until Matt worked out what he had going on,” Costillo says in the series.
Perry himself was unsparing about the signs viewers could see as he cycled through addiction and recovery. In his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he wrote the physical tells were right there on the show from season to season:
“When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”
On Netflix now
The three-part documentary The One About Matthew Perry premiered October 27 on Netflix. It weaves the cast’s private farewell with Perry’s own words and the people who tried to help him, tracing the work he did to get better as well as the costs along the way.
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