[size=large][b]”Friends” Spinning Off Joey?[/b][/size]
[i]Entertainment – E! Online[/i]
Could it be–Joey Tribbiani up for a leading role?
The hopeless thespian played by Matt LeBlanc may soon be the star of his own sitcom, now that his Friends will definitely disband at the end of its 10th season in May 2004.
According to Daily Variety, NBC suits came up with the idea of a spinoff last fall and suggested it to LeBlanc’s agents and Warner Bros. TV, which produces the sitcom. But talks fizzled out once all six friends–Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler and Phoebe, along with Joey–agreed to do one more season. Apparently, NBC didn’t want to be perceived as playing favorites, something that could have hindered negotiations with the famously tight sextet.
Now that NBC programming boss Jeff Zucker has finally conceded that the upcoming 18-episode fall season would be the finale [i](“Even I acknowledge that…the door is not open after that,” he told TV critics last week)[/i], and with the end in sight for another Peacock sitcom stalwart, Frasier, it seems the network hopes keeping at least one friend around would help compensate for the expected huge ratings loss.
But despite the Variety postulating, a post-Friends spinoff for LeBlanc is nothing more than speculation. There is no information on whether talks have resumed and/or what kind of money would be offered to LeBlanc and the Friends creators who dreamed up Joey if they buy the idea. It’s not even clear whether LeBlanc would want the gig. His non-Friends big-screen career has so far been something of a dud–he starred opposite a chimpanzee in the baseball comedy Ed, got Lost in Space and was a soldier in drag in All The Queen’s Men. He was also upstaged by the flashy chicks in Charlie’s Angels, but will be seen again in the sequel. So he might prefer to stick to the small screen.
In any case, “insiders” tell Variety LeBlanc wouldn’t want any Joey-themed show to air before the Friends finale, so even if he did sign on that would still leave the network with the problem of how to fill the Thursday night time slot for the entire 2003 season.
On Tuesday, NBC flat out denied the Variety article. “There’s no legitimacy to this story,” said Rebecca Marks, the net’s senior v.p. of publicity.
Whether there’s any future legitimacy remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Joey keeps going to auditions. In the February 13 episode of Friends, entitled “The One with the Mugging,” the ever hopeful actor will try out for a Broadway show, in which the leading man is played by guest star Jeff Goldblum.