Matt LeBlanc showed up to Friends audition with huge face injury after night of drinking
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for Friends: The Reunion.
If you would have asked Matt LeBlanc his Friends character's iconic catchphrase "How you doin'?" during the biggest audition of his life, his answer would have been: "Not great!"
During HBO Max's Friends reunion (now streaming), the actor laughed as he shared the story of how he showed up to his final audition for the role of Joey Tribbiani with a massive face injury — all because he had gone out drinking the night before.
"I remember I had gone in a bunch of times and I think it was on the final callback, I had gone with a friend of mine to run lines," LeBlanc recalled. "And he said, 'So the show is about friends and being friends? Just a group of friends?' And I said, 'Yeah, kinda!' And he was like, 'Well we should go out drinking.' I was like, 'Yeah that's a good idea!'"
Terence Patrick
Narrator: It wasn't a good idea. "To make a long story short, I woke up in the middle of the night at his apartment and had to go to the bathroom," LeBlanc said. "I got up too fast and I can't believe I'm telling this but I kind of blacked out — as you do — and fell face first into the toilet, hit my nose on the bottom of the toilet seat, and a huge chunk of meat came off my nose. And I'm looking in the mirror, it's bleeding, and I'm like, 'Oh my god. I have to go in for the big callback and it's a big ugly scab on my nose.'"
Thankfully the reason behind his face injury was so perfectly Joey that it actually helped LeBlanc land the role. "[Creator] Marta Kaufmann said, 'What happened to your face?'" he remembered. "And I told the truth and got the job."
Now we're just left to wonder why Friends never had an episode titled "The One With Joey's Face Injury." Talk about a missed opportunity to have art imitate life!
Friends: The Reunion is now available on HBO Max.
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