Do we like Matt LeBlanc?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and one old lawsuit is the only blemish, but there is little on the record about his views, so we hold off on a higher score.
Matt LeBlanc grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, with a French Canadian father who worked hard and was often away. His grandparents were a big presence, and he has talked about falling asleep in the back seat with his head on his grandmother's lap. He also caught the car bug early, eyeing a neighbour's Corvette or Camaro and wanting to be “that guy.”
The world knows him as Joey Tribbiani on Friends, and he has been upfront about the shadow that casts. He once said he had “been associated with things that fortunately get a lot of attention.” He kept working after the show, including the CBS sitcom Man with a Plan, which ended in 2020.
His most surprising chapter was fronting Top Gear for the BBC after the Clarkson era. He announced in 2018 that he was leaving after series 26, saying the travel and time commitment kept him from family and friends more than he liked. His sign-off was a gracious “Thanks for a great drive.”
The one legal stoush we found is old. In 2007 a former manager sued him in Los Angeles, alleging he owed her more than US$1 million tied to a share of his Friends and Joey earnings. A spokesman for LeBlanc dismissed the case as having no merit, and the report we read doesn't say how it ended.
On the harm check, the record is thin, and we'll say so. In 2018 Gay Times reported that LeBlanc disagreed with claims that Friends was homophobic, though the full piece was paywalled and we couldn't read his reasoning. We found nothing from him on trans rights, vaccines, climate or politics, and Flint is a CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer Television project with no obviously dodgy company attached.
The good stuff is small and personal rather than headline-grabbing. When Matthew Perry died in 2023, LeBlanc posted a warm Instagram goodbye, writing that he would “always smile” when he thought of him. That's not a charity record, but it fits the picture of a bloke who stays loyal to his mates.