Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/259813
W hen Matt LeBlanc enters a restaurant for an early lunch on a quiet Wednesday, he takes his seat a bit like a Secret Service agent taking in points of exposure. Location: Blue Ginger, Wellesley. Empty table to the right, wall of win- dows at rear, possible disturbance in front. Goal: To dodge the circus aspect of being recognized, even though that recogni- tion is a measure of his success. Such is the cognitive dissonance of being a low-profile construction worker from Newton with a high-profile face. Though it's been 20 years since Friends became a sitcom sensation and 10 since it went off the air, the television star launched as the face of Joey Tribbiani is in the spotlight again since last year's Emmy nomination as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his Showtime sitcom Episodes, taping its fourth season this summer. It's not a role that helps with cognitive dissonance: Matt LeBlanc plays a fictionalized version of Matt LeBlanc. Or rather, a through-the-looking-glass version of Matt LeBlanc— if the former Friend were down on his luck and offered a role on a fictional British prep-school series, then rubbed up against the husband-and-wife producing team in all sorts of virile Matt LeBlanc-esque ways. "It must be like living in a funhouse mirror," I remark, "playing a sitcom version of yourself." There's a moment of silence as we're both rendered speechless by the arrival of Ming Tsai's sculptural garlic and black pepper lobster entrée. "It's a fictitious character, and you just have to approach it that way," LeBlanc says. "He just happens to have the same name I do. When we were coming up with who the character was going to be, I thought it would be fun—since our salaries were all published during Friends—to make this Matt LeBlanc way, way wealthier than me." LeBlanc has a bite of lobster and makes a deeply satisfied sound. "You've got this guy completely oblivious to the consequences of his actions; that's fun to play. And he's really damaged, this lost soul, the Matt LeBlanc on TV. I like to think I have my shit a little more together than that." Does he? It can't be easy, juggling a sitcom taped in London, shared custody of his 10 -year-old daughter, and a long-term relationship with his former Joey costar Andrea Anders. He laughs and leans back, casual in faded jeans and a blue shawl-collar cotton sweater, and crosses his arms. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no." If part of having it together is identifying what you want and pursuing it, then he does. Growing up in Nonantum, LeBlanc, now 46, had the kind of no-nonsense, outdoorsy New England childhood that seems impossi- bly remote from his current stardom. "We played a lot of hockey at Fessenden and Totten Pond in Waltham, and used to go sledding at Albemarle in Newton. Funny how you see something like the hill you used to sled down as a kid, which seemed like such a huge mountain, and now you go, Is that the hill? It's not really a hill." v AS HIS SHOWTIME SITCOM EPISODES MOVES INTO ITS FOURTH SEASON, THE EMMY- NOMINATED ACTOR REFLECTS ON HIS DECADE WITH THE ICONIC SERIES FRIENDS, HIS CHILDHOOD IN NONANTUM, AND HIS TV REINCARNATION AS… HIMSELF. BY NICHOLE BERNIER PHOTOGR APHY BY R AINER HOSCH 88 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 088-091_BC_F_CoverStory_Spring14.indd 88 2/6/14 5:13 PM