Matthew Perry’s Sister Says Assistant “Should Have Known Better” in Netflix Docuseries

Matthew Perry’s younger sister says in a new Netflix documentary that his live-in assistant betrayed the family by helping the “Friends” star obtain and use the ketamine that killed him. “He should have known better,” Mia Perry Bowick says of Kenny Iwamasa, who is serving a federal prison sentence for his role in Perry’s death.

“The One About Matthew Perry,” a three-part series directed by Mary Robertson, premiered on Netflix on Tuesday, Oct. 27. That was one day before the third anniversary of Perry’s death. He was found in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28, 2023, at 54, and the medical examiner attributed his death to the acute effects of ketamine.

Bowick, a licensed psychotherapist, speaks about her brother on camera for the first time in the series. She is the only family member interviewed, the Los Angeles Times reported. The remaining “Friends” stars and the show’s creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, declined to take part. The film does include longtime friends Roger Castillo and David Pressman, actor Kevin Pollak, recovery friend Tim Harrington, director Jonathan Lynn and former U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada, whose office brought the criminal case.

Bowick says the family had trusted Iwamasa for years. “Kenny’s known my brother for 30 years. He knows what he’s battling,” she says in the series, according to the Daily Mail. “The level of betrayal we all felt. He should have known better. He could have quit his job, come and told one of the family members, he could have made a lot of different choices.” She adds, “I felt really like I had been duped, deeply.”

Earlier in the series, she describes how the family first felt about the arrangement. “We all really liked him,” she says, according to Entertainment Weekly. “And we all really, really trusted him.” Iwamasa had worked as an assistant to Perry’s manager before he began working for Perry himself, the Daily Mail reported.

Pressman goes further. “Matthew was a serious addict and he couldn’t shake it but with people like that in your orbit or taking advantage of your addiction and your wealth, I don’t think he stood much of a chance,” he says in the film.

The series also tries to explain why Perry kept using the drug. He began taking ketamine around 2021 in a clinical setting and told his family it was helping with depression, the Daily Mail reported. Bowick says she was skeptical, as a therapist, about using one substance to treat someone with his history, but that her brother seemed to improve. “He’s the best he’s ever been,” she says. “He’s present, he’s showing up, he seems happy.” She says he believed he had a spiritual experience on the drug. “He felt like he saw God in the ketamine, that’s what was drawing him to it.”

West Huddleston, a recovery advocate who worked with Perry on drug court campaigns as chief executive of All Rise, tells Robertson that after taking ketamine, Perry “felt relieved from his darkness.” According to prosecutors, Perry was eventually injecting the drug six to eight times a day and spent about $55,000 on illegally sourced ketamine in the two months before he died.

Estrada describes Iwamasa’s role in the documentary. He says the assistant “at times was the conduit for obtaining ketamine, at other times was the person who actually administered [it],” according to Netflix’s companion coverage of the series. Iwamasa pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. In May, he was sentenced to three years and five months in prison, Entertainment Weekly reported. The judge called his conduct “reckless” because he had been aware of Perry’s struggle with addiction, according to the Daily Mail.

Iwamasa was one of five people charged. Dr. Salvador Plasencia was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison and Dr. Mark Chavez to eight months of home detention. Erik Fleming received two years. Jasveen Sangha, whom Estrada calls a “ketamine queen” in the series, was sentenced to 15 years.

The documentary also covers Perry’s earlier years. Pollak recalls the parties Bruce Willis threw on the top floor of a hotel during the filming of “The Whole Nine Yards” in 2000. “I remember Matthew saying: ‘You coming to Club Willis tonight?’” Pollak says. “We were partying pretty hard when we weren’t working, but the word ‘addiction’ was not talked about at that point.”

Robertson told the Times she saw the disease, not a person, as the series’ antagonist. “The common enemy is a disease, not a person,” she said.

Groubert led Wednesday’s show with the series and said he had known Perry and that the actor had stretches of sobriety. Groubert took issue with the documentary’s focus on the assistant. He called it “completely insane” for Bowick to blame Iwamasa for her brother’s problems.

His argument was about time. “Kenny was not there for 25 years of Matthew Perry’s addiction,” Groubert said, comparing Perry’s long history with drugs to a game of musical chairs. “Kenny was there when the music stopped.” He argued that the idea that any replacement assistant would have refused Perry’s demands was preposterous given how Hollywood works.

Groubert also disputed how long Iwamasa had worked for Perry. Citing LinkedIn, he said the assistant had handled Perry’s affairs for more than 25 years, and noted that Perry did not die in all that time. That figure could not be confirmed. Published accounts of Iwamasa’s history with the family differ on when he began working for Perry directly. “Kenny loved Matthew Perry. I’ll just put that out there,” Groubert said.

He also said that almost no one of note had cooperated with the film other than Bowick. That is partly accurate. The “Friends” cast and creators declined, but several of Perry’s closest friends and collaborators appear on camera.

Groubert read from a second account of the series in which Bowick describes laughing at her brother’s burial because she felt him lean over her shoulder to make a joke. Netflix’s own coverage of the series includes the same story. He ended by noting that Robertson had reached out to the entire “Friends” cast, who did not take part.

The series is streaming now on Netflix.