Why aren’t any members of Friends in the Matthew Perry documentary?
However, his former playing partners were indeed asked to participate in the Netflix docuseries: The One Called Matthew Perry.
No one from Central Perk to talk about Chandler?
None of the Friends actors testify on camera in the new documentary dedicated to Matthew Perry. And this is necessarily a detail that is striking, when you watch the three episodes of The One Who Called Matthew Perry, currently available on Netflix. A lack, obviously, as the series marked the career of the actor, who played Chandler Bing.
However, Mary Robertson, the director of the documentary series, confirms to Variety that the team has contacted its former partners. But she adds:
“They simply chose not to participate.”
No specific reason. Certainly it would be too hard for them to express themselves about their missing friend.
This doesn’t mean that Friends is absent from the documentary, however. The series appears through archive footage, filming footage and old promotional interviews. Fans will also find more intimate memories, told by those close to Matthew Perry.
One of them notably returns to the filming of the wedding of Monica (Courteney Cox) and Chandler, in season 7. Matthew Perry was then taken directly from his rehab to the set to shoot these moving scenes. Another particularly poignant testimony evokes the funeral of the deceased actor in 2023: the five other Friends arrived together, hand in hand, before standing in front of his open coffin, in tears, to say goodbye to him.
Matthew Perry’s story was previously told extensively by the actor himself in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Mary Robertson explains that she devoured the book in one go, deeply affected by the frankness with which he recounted her addictions:
“I remember the blue couch I was sitting on, and the trees I saw out the window while I was reading it. I remember him starting his book by saying, in essence, that he should be dead. I couldn’t stop thinking about that once I finished reading…”, she confides to Variety.
However, the director made the choice to almost not include the content of these memories in her documentary.
And Mary Robertson explains that her film seeks to go beyond memories. Precisely to tell what the actor’s book could not show:
“We wanted to construct a narrative that enriches what Matthew conveyed in his memoir. His book is, by definition, a first-person narrative. It does not contain the testimonies of those who can tell what it was like to love someone so brilliant, generous and loving, but who also had to confront this immense monster that he carried on his shoulders for most of his life. It is this narrative that is missing from his memoir.”
It is therefore through the eyes of those who knew, loved and accompanied him that the three-part doc intends to complete the actor’s story. Without the direct participation of his former Friends partners, but by giving a central place to the links which united him to those who shared his life.
