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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Phil Harrison

Matthew Perry and the Ketamine Queen review – he deserved far better than this shoddy documentary

Matthew Perry
The Friends actor Matthew Perry, who died in 2023. Photograph: BBC Studios/Chris Capstick

The death of the Friends star Matthew Perry was described as “sudden” on CBS News. In truth, it was decades in the making. Perry, by his own admission, was an alcoholic by the age of 14. Throughout his prodigiously successful acting career, he was engaged in a losing battle with various addictions. Sadly, finally, in 2023 his number came up after a struggle with another drug, one whose effects were right on the line between clinical and recreational. In his memoir, he had this to say about ketamine: “[It] has my name written all over it. They might as well have called it ‘Matty’.”

Jasveen Sangha is an MBA student turned drug dealer from Essex who ended up in Hollywood, labelled the Ketamine Queen. Did she sell Perry the drugs that killed him? This documentary exploring the circumstances around Perry’s death is the work of Amber Haque, who, among other things, is the co-host of the true-crime podcast Bad People. She finds no shortage of truly terrible people here: personal assistants and doctors, dealers and quacks, lining Perry’s road to perdition, cheering him on and milking him for whatever dirty dollars they could extract along the way.

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