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One Arrested, Others Charged in ‘Friends’ Star Matthew Perry’s Death, Media Reports Say

Matthew Perry appears at the premiere of "Ride" in Los Angeles on April 28, 2015. (AP)
Matthew Perry appears at the premiere of "Ride" in Los Angeles on April 28, 2015. (AP)
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One Arrested, Others Charged in ‘Friends’ Star Matthew Perry’s Death, Media Reports Say

Matthew Perry appears at the premiere of "Ride" in Los Angeles on April 28, 2015. (AP)
Matthew Perry appears at the premiere of "Ride" in Los Angeles on April 28, 2015. (AP)

Multiple people face federal charges and at least one has been arrested related to an investigation into the death of "Friends" star Matthew Perry in Los Angeles nearly a year ago, various media outlets reported on Thursday.

The person arrested Thursday morning in Southern California was a doctor, ABC News reported citing law enforcement sources. NBC News and The New York Times also reported that at least one person was arrested, according to sources.

Perry died at the age of 54 from "acute effects" of ketamine, a powerful sedative, in addition to other factors that caused the actor to lose consciousness and drown in his hot tub last October, an autopsy said. Los Angeles homicide detectives and federal agents for months have been investigating how Perry obtained the prescription drug.

Prosecutors are slated to unseal an indictment later on Thursday, NBC News reported.

The Los Angeles County medical examiner concluded Perry succumbed to an accidental drug overdose and drowning, with no foul play suspected.

A Dec. 2023 autopsy report concluded Perry died from the "acute effects of ketamine," which combined with other factors caused the actor to lose consciousness and slip below the water in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home.

Toxicology tests found Perry's body contained dangerously high levels of ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties. Typically, people with that much ketamine in their systems are in general anesthesia during surgery, and being monitored by professionals, they said.

Other contributing factors in his death were drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of the opioid-addiction medicine buprenorphine, which was also detected in his system.

Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of drug and alcohol abuse, including during the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s television sitcom "Friends." He had been sober for 19 months with no known relapses before his death, according to interviews cited in his autopsy.

Witness interviews in the autopsy report said he had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety. But his last known treatment was a week and a half before his death, so the ketamine found in his system by medical examiners would have been introduced since that last infusion, the autopsy said.

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Movie Review: Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry Lead a Middling Spy Comedy in ‘The Union’

Mark Wahlberg, left, and Halle Berry, cast members in "The Union," pose together at the premiere of the Netflix film at the Egyptian Theatre, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Mark Wahlberg, left, and Halle Berry, cast members in "The Union," pose together at the premiere of the Netflix film at the Egyptian Theatre, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Movie Review: Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry Lead a Middling Spy Comedy in ‘The Union’

Mark Wahlberg, left, and Halle Berry, cast members in "The Union," pose together at the premiere of the Netflix film at the Egyptian Theatre, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Mark Wahlberg, left, and Halle Berry, cast members in "The Union," pose together at the premiere of the Netflix film at the Egyptian Theatre, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP)

“The Union,” an action comedy with Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, should have been more fun. Or more exciting. It certainly had a lot working in its favor, including big stars and a budget for globetrotting. But it’s lacking a certain charm that could help it be something more than the Netflix movie playing in the background.

“The Union,” streaming Friday, is a fairy tale — a very male one, about a middle-aged everyman (Wahlberg) whose life never quite got started and who gets recruited to be a spy out of the blue. Mike is a broke construction worker still living in his hometown of Patterson, New Jersey (yes, there are Springsteen songs) with his mother and hanging with his old friends in bars.

That’s all to say that for Mike, it is a breath of fresh air when his old high school girlfriend Roxanne (Berry), walks into the bar one evening looking like a punk-rock superhero in a leather motorcycle jacket. Glamorous and confident and never bothered by the flop of hair getting in her eyes, she has clearly found a life outside Patterson.

The problem, or a problem, I think, is that we already know what she does. Instead of putting the audience in Mike’s shoes, as the fish out of water trying to figure out why he’s woken up in a luxury suite in London after meeting his high school ex in his hometown bar, “The Union” starts on Roxanne. It begins with a kind of “Mission: Impossible”-style extraction gone wrong, in Trieste, Italy, where most of her team ends up dead. She decides that they need some working class grit to reboot.

The idea for the movie came from Stephen Levinson, Wahlberg’s longtime business partner, who together helped bring another middle-of-the-road Netflix action-comedy to life in “Spenser Confidential.” It's directed very basically by Julian Farino, a journeyman who helmed many episodes of “Entourage,” and written by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim. And there is a sort of charming fantasy about the notion that anyone could be a moderately successful international spy given the opportunity and a few weeks of training. In the movies, women get to find out they’re secret royalty and men get to find out they’re secretly great spies.

But “The Union” never quite hits its stride tonally. It’s not silly enough to be a comedy, though I think that’s what it would prefer to be. J.K. Simmons is given too little to work with as the head of this secret agency, which also employs underwritten characters played by Jackie Earle Haley, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Alice Lee. One of the more moderately successful running jokes is that Mike’s undercover character is from Boston (get it?). A hulking English henchman even has a heart-to-heart with him about “Good Will Hunting.”

Berry and Wahlberg are fine together, with an easy rapport, but zero chemistry. This would not be problem if the movie wasn’t also trying to be a will-they-won’t-they romance between a woman who forgot her roots and a guy who needs to. I never quite bought into the idea that either of them are actually still thinking about their high school relationship and what went wrong. There’s been a lot of life in the interim to dwell on decisions you made at 17. Not everyone can be Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, or even Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton – but maybe in this case the story should have changed to serve its actors better.

That's a nitpick for something with much larger problems. And ultimately “The Union” suffers the fate of many high-priced streaming movies before it: There’s just not enough there — action, comedy, romance, art — to demand (or, rather, earn) your full attention.