Mary Robertson, director of the new Netflix documentary about Matthew Perry, has explained why the five surviving Friends co-stars declined to appear on camera.
The Emmy-winning filmmaker, who helmed the three-part series The One About Matthew Perry released Sunday, said she approached Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer about participating. All five turned her down. Robertson shared her perspective on their absence in promotional interviews tied to the launch, noting that the cast members are grieving Perry’s October 2023 death in their own private ways.
“We know the cast of Friends loves Matthew and are grieving in their own ways,” Robertson said. “We did approach them, and they decided not to participate.”
The director added that she still managed to craft an intimate look at Perry’s decade-defining sitcom through other channels. She pointed to the involvement of Jeff Strauss, a producer and writer who worked closely on Friends, plus a trove of photographs that helped shape a fresh angle on the show. “I feel so privileged and honored, though, by the participation of a producer and writer [Jeff Strauss] who worked very closely on Friends, and the photographs that were shared with us… [which] allowed us to offer a perspective on that sitcom that I don’t think you’ve heard before and that is quite intimate,” she said.
Robertson also emphasized that the documentary deliberately foregrounds what she called Perry’s “lowercase friends” — the tight-knit circle he formed in his teens and early twenties, long before fame. “Not only were they his real-life friends from his early 20s, but they were his real-life friends on the day that he died,” Robertson said. “They were friends for decades and decades and decades.”
Among the participants who did sit for interviews is Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, who delivers emotional testimony about her brother. The documentary arrives as the three-year mark of Perry’s passing approaches this Tuesday, October 28. The actor, 54, was found unresponsive in his Los Angeles home’s hot tub; his death was later ruled to result from the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning, coronary artery disease and buprenorphine cited as contributing factors. Five people were charged in connection with supplying the drug, including Jasveen Sangha, dubbed the “Ketamine Queen,” who received a 15-year prison sentence earlier this year.
While the Friends cast stayed out of the documentary, Aniston has spoken publicly about Perry since his death. Last year she addressed the group’s efforts to support him through his addiction struggles. “We did everything we could,” Aniston said. She continued: “But it almost felt like we’d been mourning Matthew for a long time because his battle with that disease was a really hard one for him to fight.”
Aniston added a bittersweet note about his passing. “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better,” she said. She finished by expressing relief that her friend was no longer suffering: “I’m glad he’s out of pain.”
Perry himself had been candid about his substance abuse in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, published roughly a year before his death.
Robertson framed her documentary as a gift to Perry’s admirers. She told Netflix’s TUDUM platform that she wanted to make the film “for those who love Matthew — which, by the way, is kind of everyone — to love him more.”
The One About Matthew Perry is now streaming on Netflix.