Was Joey from “Friends” a Copy of Joey from “Blossom”?

Could one of the most iconic sitcom characters of the ‘90s have started out as a copy?

According to Joey Lawrence, the answer is yes. In a recent interview, the Blossom star claimed that Matt LeBlanc’s beloved Friends character, Joey Tribbiani, was directly inspired by his own role as Joey Russo—a similarly dim-witted but charming ladies’ man.

“Joey Russo was so successful that when they were creating Friends, they wanted a 25-year-old version of that,” Lawrence said.

He even alleges that Matt LeBlanc was sent to live tapings of Blossom, where he’d sit in the audience with a yellow legal pad and study Lawrence’s performance—focusing on how he brought a certain innocence to the character. The idea, he claims, was to give Tribbiani the same likability that would let him “get away with his womanizing.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, Lawrence says the Friends creators changed the character’s name to Joey as a direct nod to Blossom’s popularity at the time. NBC’s Blossom wrapped its five-season run just a few months before Friends premiered in 1994.

Neither NBC nor the creators of Friends have commented on the claims. Matt LeBlanc, for his part, has never publicly acknowledged Blossom as a reference point.