Matthew Perry‘s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, recently revealed how one of the happiest scenes in Friends concealed a painful reality in plain sight. The late actor’s character, Chandler Bing, is one of the most beloved in TV history. His sister opened up about how his struggle with addiction caused him to miss out on a big life moment.
Matthew Perry’s sister recalled about the Chandler and Monica wedding
Monica and Chandler’s wedding in the Friends Season 7 finale was a scene everyone was looking forward to and remembers fondly to this day. However, for Matthew Perry‘s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, its filming was a bittersweet moment. In an interview with PEOPLE published on October 21, Perry Bowick revealed the scene was heartbreaking because his family feared he would never be able to get married in real life.
She recalled that he had just come out of rehab when he filmed that scene. Perry Bowick also mentioned that his drinking had escalated between Seasons 5 and 7. “We all knew how serious his disorder was, so there was this sense of, ‘Who knows what’s going to happen?'” she told PEOPLE. “Watching that wedding, we all knew he wanted that in life. He wanted a partner, he wanted kids.”
The interview came a week before Perry Bowick’s appearance in the three-part Netflix docuseries, The One About Matthew Perry. It will hit screens on October 27, a day before the third anniversary of his death. Perry went to rehab more than a dozen times, including a few times while filming Friends.
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry recalled going back to rehab after filming Chandler and Monica’s wedding (via The Independent). He wrote, “I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”
