The actor thought he would be better than LeBlanc so he auditioned twice

Jan 24, 2014 21:51 GMT  ·  By

Years after it ended, the popular sitcom “Friends” is still being regarded as one of the most successful family comedy shows ever made. At the height of its popularity, it drew millions of viewers in front of the TV screen when it aired.

Now, actor Hank Azaria dishes out some behind the scenes juicy secrets. He apparently had his sights firmly set on the role of Joey Tribbiani. “That's the only job I ever auditioned for twice,” he told Huffington Post.

Azaria really believed that he could bring something to the role that no one else could. It's too bad the producers didn't agree with him, not the first time, or the second time he went to the audition.

“I thought it was so good -- they had rejected me once -- I said, ‘I'm going back, I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna try it again,’” Hank reminisces with a subtle nostalgia.

Watching the first episodes of the series, a bitter Azaria was still convinced that he would have done a better job, “At first, in my opinion, in the first few episodes of ‘Friends’ he hadn't really found it. And all that first season I was like, ‘I could've been funnier than him!’”

But he admits that in the end that LeBlanc evolved into the role, found its true meaning and took it further than he ever could. However, he did not emerge as a total loser from this casting. In the end, he was awarded a secondary role in the production.

Today, fans may remember that Azaria played Phoebe's on-again-off-again love interest, David “the Science Guy,” whom she almost married, had he not gone to Minsk for research purposes.

In the end, Azaria might not have got the role he so badly wanted, but he still went on to have a fulfilling career in television. Apart from a series of TV show, he's also famous for doing a number of iconic character voices on “The Simpsons,” one of the longest-running animated series on TV.