Everyone knows him as Joey Tribbiani from Friends, and now Matt LeBlanc stars in a new comedy series, premiering on Yes-TV this Saturday.
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In Man with a Plan LeBlanc plays Adam Burns, who owns Burns Brothers Construction with his older brother Don (Kevin Nealon) but when his wife Andi (Liza Snyder) wants to go back to working full-time as a medical lab technician after raising the couple's three children, Adam a full-time dad and starts getting much more involved in his children's lives.
Having celebrated his 51st birthday earlier this week, as evident by his silvery hair (which already started graying in the 1990s, but was dyed for his role in Friends), LeBlanc continues to be a sought-after actor. He started his career as a male model, he appeared in commercials and video clips for Alanis Morissette and Bon Jovi until getting his first acting break with a guest stint on Married with Children.
But it was Friends that truly made him a household name and when the sitcom came to an end in 2004, LeBlanc led the spin-off Joey, which ran for two seasons and was canceled due to poor ratings. He then took a break from acting until he got the invite to play a version of himself in Showtime's Episodes, for which he won the Golden Globe Award and was nominated for four Emmys.
"After Joey ended I took about five or six years off and I just spent time being a dad", says LeBlanc in an interview promoting his new show, "I was in a real fortunate position. I had enough money that I didn't have to go to work. I could retire. And David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, co-creators of Friends called me and said they had an idea for a show and I said, okay, I'm in. And they said, do you want to hear the idea? I said, I don't. I just had so much faith in them as writers, I really learned a lot on Friends.
"I remember the very first scene we shot on Episodes. It was a scene with Stephen Mangan and me in the car from the very first episode. And I have this big speech. There are a bunch of jokes and not one laugh and I was like, oh! In my head I am thinking, I forgot how to do this. I don't – then they cut and they are like, that was great, it was funny, and I was like, oh right, so you're supposed to be quiet when you are watching that. So, it took a little getting used to that, but then as far as a transition goes back into this, Episodes kind of re-whet my whistle for work, if you will. That's maybe not a great analogy but we would do nine episodes every 18 months.
"So that's not a giant schedule. It's not a lot of work. I mean I work maybe three months every 18 months. So, it was great writing and working with great actors and really fun but I wanted to do more."
Q: What has stayed mostly with you from Joey Tribbiani?
"It's probably a lot of things but, I mean, I am probably Joey Tribbiani's biggest fan. I've had a great time playing that character. It was a lot of fun. We are working on Episode 2 right now of Man with a Plan and there is a great joke about a sandwich that always brings me back. We're doing this, you know, my wife comes to work and she says, I just wanted to say thank you, and she gives me a sausage and pepper sandwich. So, I was like where am I? What's going on?
Q: What did you actually do all those years you took off?
"I traveled a bit, I spent a lot of time with my family, I spend a lot of time – you know you get busy with work and this sort of list of things you've got to do around the house kind of piled up after 12 years. It was pretty thick. So, I got a lot of that stuff done, and I have a cattle ranch. So, I spent a lot of time out there, just a lot of time outside. Just kind of – I went to – this sounds so awful.
"I went to Target for the first time. I have been saying to my friend, have you been to this place? Yeah. It is awesome. So, we were just so busy all the time. I have sort of like reconnected with just life in general. You know, went to the doctor and got the checkup. Just stuff that you sort of keep pushing aside – taught my little girl how to ride a horse, went camping, played around with the motorcycles, went to see my mother more and had my mother come out more, and sort of really cemented the relationship with my mother and my daughter.
"They have a really tight bond now and she was pretty little at the time, so it was great to sort of watch those two sort of cement this bond together that is really beautiful now to watch and then so I am really glad they had that time to go and do that."
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