Fame is a funny thing. Many people certainly hope to experience the (assumed) effects of becoming famous, but it seems like any good also comes with negative or just plain strange stuff. The stars of Friends know a lot about what that’s like, having immediately become famous when the comedy debuted in 1994, and lead Matt LeBlanc relayed a story about a woman driving next to him getting into a car accident upon recognizing him.
How A Woman Driving Next To Matt LeBlanc Got Into A Car Accident After Seeing Him
The 2026 TV schedule is in full swing, but I doubt that most of us even consider that one day soon we might happen to see one of our favorite current television stars as we’re just going about our day while stuck in traffic. Well, that’s just what happened to one Friends fan during the height of the show’s popularity, when she ended up driving next to Matt LeBlanc, who, of course, portrayed the funnily food-loving Joey Tribbiani for all 10 seasons (and the only Friends spinoff) of the show’s run.
When speaking to his Man with a Plan co-star, Kevin Nealon, on the SNL funny man’s podcast, Hiking with Kevin, LeBlanc was asked if it was “fun” to interact with fans and be recognized while Friends was on the air. He responded by saying, “I don’t know if it was fun,” and added that “some weird stuff happened” before telling this brief tale:
One time I was on [Highway] 101 going to work, there was a girl next to me with her windows down, she was playing the Friends theme song. She looked over and saw me and went, ‘Oh my God!,’ she took her foot off the break and hit the car in front of her. But the traffic was still stopped. I didn’t know what to do, so I just slowly put my window up; pretended it didn’t happen. I couldn’t go anywhere [laughs].
I can only imagine that innumerable celebrities have unknowingly and unwillingly caused accidents, but it must be a real trip to witness someone become so shocked at realizing you are nearby that they do something like cause a fender bender. It’s actually lucky for everyone involved that this happened at a time when traffic was basically at a standstill, otherwise the result could have easily been much worse.
As this occurred in the Los Angeles area, it makes sense that spotting the guy who actually played Joey (a character who’s said to have been inspired by a similarly named character on the sitcom, Blossom) would be relatively easy to do. However, LeBlanc said previously that the reach of not only one of the best NBC comedies but one of the best sitcoms of all time goes way further than even he suspected. The Emmy nominee once noted that he was recognized during a trip to the remote location of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, and there just aren’t many people who’ll have that kind of fame during their lifetime.
