Matthew Perry’s family and friends say the late actor was “struggling” before his final TV appearance on the 2021 “Friends” reunion special.
“It’s hard to watch, because he’s just not himself,” his friend Kevin Pollak says in the Netflix documentary “The One About Matthew Perry,” adding that Perry hasn’t been on camera in a while.
Pollak notes that at the time of the HBO Max reunion special, Perry was “struggling with sobriety” and feeling “a lot of pressure.”
In the documentary, Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, further explains, “Because his health was so poor, he hadn’t really been out in public since 2018.”
When Perry decided to participate in the 2021 reunion — which reunited him on screen with his former co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer — his sister says he was “very nervous about coming back.”
“(He) wanted to say, ‘I’m here. I’m OK, everything’s OK,'” Bowick said. But that “was only half true” at the time the special was filmed, she said.
After the special, viewers expressed concern about Perry’s health on social media.
In the Netflix documentary, Bowick explains that his brother’s “energy and life force” were “diminished” after his near-death experience in 2018, when his colon burst due to overuse of opioids.
The actor detailed the terrifying ordeal, during which he spent two weeks in a coma, five months in the hospital and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months to treat the health crisis, in his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing.”
Doctors told Bowick that Perry’s colon had ruptured in several places, causing “intense sepsis” throughout her body, she recalled in the Netflix doc.
The “Friends” star underwent several surgeries to repair his colon and, “at one point the decision was made to put him on an ECMO machine, which is basically like an iron lung,” his sister adds.
“His fingertips were turning black. It was possible he could lose his fingers,” she said.
Bowick says it was like a “slap in the face” to learn the cause of Perry’s health scare, explaining that “opioids can significantly slow down your digestive tract.”
She adds, “There is so much grief that family members and friends face when their loved ones struggle with addiction. »
At the time, she was “mad at him” and thought, “You did this to yourself, man… It was really, really, really hard.” »
Perry’s months-long hospital stay was the first time Bowick saw him and thought he wouldn’t wake up.
When “The Whole Nine Yards” actor came home from the hospital, “he was still in really, really bad shape,” Bowick recalled.
“He had a completely open wound in his intestine that wasn’t completely healed. He had a colostomy bag. He aged 20 years in three months. He could barely walk.”
The “Friends” reunion was his first major public appearance after this ordeal.
“At the reunion, I think Matthew…knew he couldn’t get to where everyone wanted him to be…I think he was really aware of that,” Jeff Strauss, former “Friends” writer and producer, says in the doc.
After filming, Perry felt “relieved” and “tired,” according to Bowick.
“He was kind of wondering, ‘How am I going to continue?’ I know he was really scared, I know he was really fighting for his life,” his sister said.
Part of him “didn’t think it was possible to live a sober life,” she adds.
Although she refused to give up “hope,” Bowick began to view her addiction “as a terminal illness.”
Perry died in his hot tub at his California home at age 54 on October 28, 2023.
According to the autopsy report, he died from the “acute effects of ketamine” and drowning.
“Matthew Perry’s” is now streaming on Netflix.
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