Netflix has released the trailer for The One About Matthew Perry, a three-part documentary series premiering October 27, 2026. Directed by Mary Robertson and produced by Maxine Productions, part of Sony Pictures Television, the series traces Perry's life and career through family members, longtime friends and people who worked with him across different stages of his career.
The title embraces Friends, then tries to move beyond it
Even the documentary's name borrows the familiar naming convention of Friends episodes. That makes sense: any attempt to tell Perry's story has to reckon with the role that transformed him into a global television star. But Netflix's approach appears designed to keep Chandler Bing from becoming the entire story.
Perry's sister Mia Perry Bowick is among the central participants, alongside his longtime friends David Pressman and Roger Castillo. The documentary also features people connected to his professional life, including former NBC executive Warren Littlefield, Friends writer Jeff Strauss and actor Kevin Pollak.
The production is drawing from material that audiences have not already spent decades watching. Netflix says the series includes previously unreleased photographs and videos from the Perry family's private archive. Those images, combined with firsthand recollections, give the documentary a route into the distance between a hugely familiar public persona and a much less visible private life.
Fame is part of the story, not its solution
The trailer returns to a contradiction Perry himself discussed publicly: extraordinary professional success did not erase his personal struggles. The series will address his long experience with addiction and recovery as well as the advocacy work that grew from it.
That makes the choice of perspective particularly important. Rather than treating Perry's difficulties as a grim footnote to Friends nostalgia, the announced structure places them alongside his work, relationships and humor. The challenge for the finished series will be to preserve those different parts of his life without allowing any single one of them to become a shorthand for the whole person.
A portrait assembled by the people who knew him
Robertson directs all three parts and executive produces with Lisa Kalikow, Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman. Lora Moftah serves as co-executive producer, with Jessica Call producing. The series comes from Maxine Productions, part of Sony Pictures Television.
The One About Matthew Perry premieres on Netflix on October 27, 2026, almost three years after Perry died on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54. That timing inevitably gives the release the shape of a remembrance. The trailer, however, points toward something more specific than an anniversary tribute: an attempt to recover the person who existed behind a character so famous that, for millions of viewers, the two could easily blur together.
