It would be easy to slot Matthew Perry, the Friends star who died from ketamine and drowning in October 2023, into the latter category. But in the intimate three-part Netflix documentary The One About Matthew Perry, director Mary Robertson (Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV) honors his memory by resisting that simplistic binary. Yes, addiction (and a cadre of enablers who are now serving time for their roles in his death) killed Perry at 54. It’s also true that he spent more than 25 years surviving it, fighting to act and write and enjoy his friendships and make his family proud and fall in love. Instead of hiding that struggle, he used his fortune to aid others in their recoveries and his platform to advocate for a broader understanding of addiction as the illness that it is.

Robertson captures all of this in straightforward, chronological order, through emotional interviews with family and longtime friends, as well as Perry’s own startlingly frank reflections in media appearances and his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The absence of major celebrities, whether by design or otherwise, limits the fond platitudes. In their place are vivid behind-the-scenes anecdotes and candid memories of who he was offscreen—the ambition, charm, humor, and magnanimity, but also the pain he was capable of inflicting on those who loved and needed him. His sister Mia Perry Bowick, a psychotherapist, is the most insightful presence, embracing grief and ambivalence as she ties her big brother’s highs and lows to early family dynamics.