Joseph Francis Tribbiani Jr. is a fictional character, serving as one of the primary characters of the NBC sitcom Friends and the protagonist of its spin-off Joey. He is portrayed by Matt LeBlanc in both series. Joey is an Italian-American struggling actor who lives in New York City with his roommate and best friend, Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry), and hangs out in a tight-knit group of his best friends: Chandler, Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), and Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow). He lived with a few other roommates when Chandler moved out to move in with Monica. Joey once mentioned being 13 in 1981. He is from Queens, New York and is Catholic. Joey comes from a working-class Italian-American family of eight children, of which he is the only boy. His father Joseph Tribbiani Sr. (Robert Costanzo), is a pipefitter, and his mother's name is Gloria (Brenda Vaccaro). Joey has seven sisters: Mary Therese (Mimi Lieber on Friends) a.k.a. Mary Teresa (Christina Ricci on Joey), Mary Angela (Holly Gagnier), Dina (Lisa Melilli in The One Where Chandler Can't Remember Which Sister, Marla Sokoloff in The One with Monica's Boots), Gina (K.J. Steinberg on Friends, Drea de Matteo on Joey), Tina (Lisa Maris), Veronica (Dena Miceli), and Cookie (Alex Meneses). As a child, he was extremely accident-prone. In "The One with Ross' New Girlfriend", it was implied that he was sexually abused by his tailor but did not realize it until Chandler went to the same tailor. Joey is portrayed as promiscuous and dim-witted but good-natured, as well as very loyal, caring, and protective of his friends. The writers of Friends did not intend his character to be stupid, but Matt LeBlanc played "dim-witted" so well that it became a part of the character. He is a food-loving womanizer who has had more luck with dates than any of the other group members. In contrast to his persona as the "ladies' man", he has also a marked childish side. He enjoys playing video games and foosball, loves sandwiches and pizza, and is a big fan of Baywatch and Beavis and Butt-Head. As a struggling actor, he is constantly looking for work. He was ordained as a minister in "The One with the Truth About London" and officiated at Monica and Chandler's wedding. And also, Phoebe and Mike's wedding in Season 10. He does not like sharing food, especially when it is pizza, and has difficulty with even simple mathematics. In sports, Joey likes the New York Yankees in baseball, New York Knicks in basketball, New York Giants in football, and the New York Rangers in hockey.
Appearances Joey Tribbiani is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, having refused to follow in his father's foot steps and become a pipefitter. He started his acting profession doing stage work, introduced in the show's pilot episode by Monica and Chandler having seen Joey in a production of Pinocchio. Sometime before the start of the series, Joey also had appeared in a porn film, as a fully clothed extra. Joey also mentioned appearing in a play with trolls before getting the leading role of Sigmund Freud in the musical play Freud!, where he was first spotted by his talent agent Estelle Leonard. She immediately got him a film role in the same episode as Al Pacino's "butt double" – a speechless role he later lost due to taking the part too seriously. By then, he said, he had been doing "nothing but crappy plays for six years". Monica and Chandler also once discussed having seen Joey in a version of Macbeth, in which he was unable to pronounce most of the words.
Season 1 Joey becomes an "actor-slash-model" when he appears on print ads for the NYC Free Clinic, as a man named "Mario" who has a venereal disease. He also did an infomercial for a device that allows milk to be poured out of milk cartons; he played "Kevin", a man who had extreme difficulty opening the cartons without the use of the device. ("Kevin" also inadvertently choked on a cookie during the show). This haunted him again when he appeared in the play The King, where he was made fun of due to choking on a cookie.
Season 2 In Season Two, Joey continued his stage work, appearing as "The King" in a poorly reviewed (and never-named) play. Published reviews of his performance claimed he was "disturbingly unskilled" and that he achieved "brilliant new levels of sucking" in a "mediocre play" with "mindless, adolescent direction". Only days after these reviews came out, Joey gets his big break when he lands his first major role as Dr. Drake Ramoray on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, a real-life television show outside of the context of Friends which featured Jennifer Aniston's father John. In-universe, Joey had initially gone in to read for a one-shot role as a cab driver; it is implied that he got the recurring role of Ramoray by sleeping with the casting director. While still playing Ramoray, he also appears in a bit role as a dead man in the film Outbreak 2: The Virus Takes Manhattan, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Originally his character was only dying in the scene but due to Joey overacting, it was changed to him being already dead.) Several episodes later, Joey costs himself the Days of Our Lives gig when during an interview with Soap Opera Digest, he radically overstates and claims he writes most of his own lines. This angers the show's writers, who out of spite, "kill off" his character by having Dr. Ramoray fall down an elevator shaft. Joey takes this hard and admits that his role on Days was the best thing that ever happened to him.
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