Sister reveals Friends stars' heartbreaking final goodbye

Three years after the world lost him, a new Netflix series is reopening the heartbreak.

And it reveals exactly what happened when his five TV best friends said goodbye.

The One About Matthew Perry, a three-part docuseries, arrived on Netflix on Oct. 27, led by the actor's sister, Mia Perry Bowick.

They all walked in together

In the final episode, Bowick recalls the Friends cast arriving at his funeral at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles in November 2023.

It was a small service for close friends and family. She hadn't seen her brother's co-stars in about 20 years.

Jennifer Aniston was the first to hug her. Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer followed.

"And then, all five of them walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around him, crying," Bowick says.

Hank Azaria, who also attended, said at the time that mourners were "alternately laughing and crying remembering him."

None of the Friends stars sit down for the series, though they appear in old footage. Director Mary Robertson, who made Quiet on Set, said they were asked to take part and chose not to.

"I know that the cast of 'Friends' loves Matthew and is grieving him. We did reach out to them, and they decided not to participate," she told USA Today.

Instead, the series draws on unseen photos and home videos from the Perry family archive, and on Bowick's memories of her big brother.

Friends writer Jeff Strauss, actor Kevin Pollak and Perry's friend Tim Harrington are among those who do speak.

Robertson wrote to Bowick expecting no answer. "I screamed when she wrote back," she told USA Today.

Shame and guilt

Bowick takes viewers back to 2001, when Perry went to rehab and Friends producers had to shoot around him.

"There was an incredible amount of shame and guilt that came along with that, because he knew how many people were working on these shows, that their livelihood was dependent on it," she says.

She also says he spent more than $7 million trying to get sober, Newsweek reported. In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he put the figure at more than $9 million.

Perry died on Oct. 28, 2023, aged 54.

That night in 2022 was one of his last red carpets. The One About Matthew Perry is streaming now on Netflix.