Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: Blossom, friends

Friends: LeBlanc's Joey Influenced by "Blossom" Character: Lawrence

Joey Lawrence on NBC executives looking to his Blossom character, Joey Russo, as an inspiration for Matt LeBlanc's Joey Tribbiani on Friends.

Joey Lawrence is no stranger to TV success since emerging on the scene in 1982 with two high-profile NBC sitcoms in Diff'rent Strokes and Silver Spoons, playing characters coincidentally also named Joey. It would be a trend that would follow him into his biggest TV success with runs on NBC's Gimme a Break! playing Joey Donovan in 1983 and Blossom in 1990, with the Mayim Bialik-starred series being Lawrence's first to break 100 episodes for its five-season run playing Joey Russo. As the trend continued with NBC's Brotherly Love that lasted two seasons and ABC's Melissa & Joey, the actor appeared on the Magical Rewind podcast with hosts Will Friedle and Sabrina Bryan to talk about how his Joey Russo played a part in inspiring the 1990s-2000s NBC megahit sitcom Friends and star Matt LeBlanc.

Joey Lawrence Reveals Matt LeBlanc's Character Joey Tribbiani is Based on His Joey Russo on 'Blossom'

To borrow Lawrence's catchphrase from the Don Reo series, "Whoa!", the actor appeared on the Disney Channel rewatch podcast to discuss his 1999 cable movie Horse Sense when questions turned to his 40+ year career. "[My character] Joey Russo on Blossom was so successful that when they were creating Friends, they wanted a 25-year-old version of that," Lawrence said. "Warren Littlefield, who had taken over NBC…I don't think [the character's] name was even Joey Tribbiani. I think it was something else. And because Joey Russo was so successful, I think they changed it to Joey Tribbiani."

Lawrence explained how the David Crane and Marta Kaufman series tried to balance LeBlanc's Joey's womanizing ways with his innocence, "It's also a tightrope that you have to walk, because when you're a womanizer, or…the way that you can get by because you're not, like, lecherous, is with innocence, you know?," he said. LeBlanc's success on the show was in part due to the series' ensemble nature alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and the late Matthew Perry as Friends lasted 10 seasons from 1994-2004.

LeBlanc would be the only character to be given his own series spinoff with the two-season run of Joey from 2004-2006. The actor would return to episodic television with sitcom runs on Showtime's Episodes (2011-2017) and CBS's Man with a Plan (2020). He would reunite with his Friends co-stars when HBO Max hosted Friends: The Reunion in 2021, marking the last time the six would share the screen together with Perry's passing in 2023. In addition to Bialik and Lawrence, Blossom starred Jenna von Oÿ, Ted Wass, and Michael Stoyanov, with the cast open to doing a reunion. Lawrence is still active, doing a string of rom-coms with Frankie Meets Jack and Love by Design, in 2023, andMarry Christmas in 2024. For more, you can check out the entire episode below.

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