Matthew Perry’s Sister Speaks Out for First Time: ‘I Still Talk to Him’
08:34
It’s been three years since Matthew Perry passed away, but his sister, Mia Perry Bowick, says she still feels his presence.
During an appearance on TODAY on Oct. 26, Bowick described Perry as a “constance presence” in her family’s lives. “I do still talk to him,” she said.
Bowick went into more detail while speaking to TODAY.com, saying that she feels Perry connects with her through one sign.
“My favorite sign for Matty is anything I see with Batman on it. I have a Batman tattoo,” she tells TODAY.com, adding that signs from her brother “show up constantly.”
The “Friends” star was found dead on Oct. 28, 2023. His cause of death was later revealed to be the acute effects of ketamine, with contributing factors including drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, a medication that’s used to treat opioid use disorder.
Bowick opens up about her late brother’s life and career in three-part Netflix docuseries titled “The One About Matthew Perry,” out Oct. 27.
While speaking with TODAY.com, she explained that she associates Batman signs with her brother since he was “obsessed” with the character.
“Ever since he was a little boy, it was just always his favorite superhero, and he just was very connected to him. He had all sorts of really incredible paraphernalia around Batman, and he just loved him. It’s just like an automatic association anytime I see the little Batman symbol,” she says.
Bowick, a licensed psychotherapist, said she regularly broaches the topic of the power of signs from loved ones with her own patients.
“I talk about that a lot in my grief practice: how we can choose to decide that these signs mean something so that it can give you that little boost during the day that you might need, versus like, ‘Oh that couldn’t possibly (be a sign).’ It was like, ‘Well it could, and wouldn’t it be nice to believe that (and) maybe choose that?’ And it kind of gives you a little bit like the warm fuzzies,” she says.
Perry left a lasting impact on his family, but he also influenced the lives of many others, as the director Mary Robertson discovered while working on the docuseries.
“I was really struck at some point in the production by the number of people we were interviewing who had an era with Matthew, and that could be one year or two years or 10 years. And they would routinely, time and again, describe this era as the high point of their lives,” she tells TODAY.com.
“I think Matthew’s influence is incredibly deep and incredibly wide,” she adds.
