If I say the name Joey Tubbiani today, everyone on Earth who was born before 2000 and possessed a huge television immediately Matt Leblanc with his mischievous smile and her black hair, pronouncing a line of nonsense or asking a beautiful girl how She does. And that’s exactly how it should be. Retrospectively, SitCom NBC The cast was perfectAnd one of the reasons why “friends” have turned into a phenomenon of pop culture, this was considered for decades. But even in the 90s, before the start of the show, emerging actors knew that the main roles of this series were gold opportunities to stand out and stimulate their career – even if they had not suspected the monumental world impact that the program would have on the kind of comedy and television broadcast itself.

Thus, each young Hollywood budding actor who heard of the sitcom at the time was trying to share it with it. Among them was an ambitious Hank Azaria, approaching the thirties, desperately wanting to ensure the role of Joey. The actor already had fantastic appearances to his credit in classics such as Gary Marshall Rom-Com, “pretty woman”, “ And the brilliant drama nominated for Robert Redford’s Oscars, “Quiz Show”. He also appeared in an episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. Admittedly, his career improved, but these jobs in his CV did not guarantee anything about his audition for Joey.

Appearing via a video call In “The Late Late Show” by James Corden in 2021, “The Simpsons” Alum recalled his experience by trying to embark on “Friends”. He explained,

“I auditioned for Joey, and I didn’t understand him, and I said to myself:” No, no, I have to go back, I have to try again. “So I intimidated my way for a second time and they were very nice and I looked at my hearing, then I threw alert.

On “The Late Late Show”, Azaria also added that his co-star Matthew Perry was a great friend to him, and they all read the script and auditioned for the show. He said, “We didn’t know that it was going to be the huge phenomenon he transformed, but we knew it was great, and we were all so desperate to be in it.” But everything was not lost for the actor. Finally, he managed to obtain a guest role on “Friends”, playing Phoebe’s boyfriend (Lisa Kudrow), who appeared for the first time in season 1 and returned later for four additional episodes in seasons 7 and 9.

It was not necessarily a huge or influential role, but Azaria did not need it to strive as an actor in the future. He already had his beloved characters “The Simpsons” to express, and after 1994, he was becoming more and more frequently in larger and better films. He was in Michael Mann’s legendary “heat” And then Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster in 1998 “Godzilla”. In 2017, he even obtained his own television program, “Brockmire”, a criminally underwater but puffed and lively dramatic on baseball, dependence and the second chance.

Overall, it is for better that Zealia was refused to play Joey and continued to have an illustrious and respectable career anyway – both on the big and small screen.