Friends Stars' Heartbreaking Final Farewell to Matthew Perry Revealed in Netflix Documentary

The five surviving Friends stars silently joined hands around Matthew Perry's casket at his private Los Angeles funeral and broke down in tears, his sister has revealed in a new Netflix documentary released today.

Mia Perry Bowick, the actor's younger half-sister, says in The One About Matthew Perry that Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer arrived together at the Forest Lawn service in November 2023. She says they walked to the coffin hand in hand and formed a circle around it, crying.

Ms Perry Bowick describes a small ceremony for 'family and close friends only'. She says Aniston was the first of the group to hug her, although all five did, and that she had not seen them properly for about two decades.

The three-part series arrived on Netflix on 27 October, the day before the third anniversary of Perry's death. It is directed by Mary Robertson, whose previous work includes the documentary series Quiet on Set. Perry, who was 54 when he died, played Chandler Bing in all 236 episodes of Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004.

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None of the five lead actors takes part in the series, which instead draws on Perry's family, friends and colleagues. Netflix has not said whether they were asked. Industry sources have told entertainment outlets that all five were approached and declined, with one saying the group felt they had already grieved publicly.

Contributors include Perry's friends David Pressman and Roger Castillo, former colleagues Billy Gallo and Kevin Pollak, NBC executive Warren Littlefield and Friends writer Jeff Strauss.

After Perry's death, the cast issued a joint statement saying they were 'utterly devastated' and had been 'more than just cast mates'. Individual tributes followed on social media.

The decision to stay off camera means the documentary focuses less on on-screen nostalgia and more on the accounts of those who lived alongside Perry away from the spotlight, offering a largely personal, family-centred portrait of his final years.

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Ms Perry Bowick says in the trailer that her brother spent $7m (€6.4m and £5.5m) trying to get sober. 'That's how seriously he took his disease,' she says. She also speaks of a sense of emptiness he could never fill, whatever his fame.

Perry was found unresponsive at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on 28 October 2023. The Los Angeles County medical examiner gave the cause of death as the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning among the contributing factors.

Five people were charged over his death and all have now been sentenced in a federal court in Los Angeles. Jasveen Sangha, a dual US-UK national dubbed the 'Ketamine Queen', received 15 years for supplying the drug.

Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry's former live-in assistant, who admitted injecting him with the ketamine that killed him, was sentenced in May to three years and five months.

Dr Salvador Plasencia was given 30 months and Erik Fleming two years. A second doctor, who supplied the ketamine Plasencia sold to Perry, received eight months of home detention.