Matt LeBlanc could have starred in 'Modern Family,' but says he was all wrong for it

Gary Levin | USA TODAY

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LOS ANGELES — Matt LeBlanc was offered a lead role in ABC's hit Modern Family, but he turned it down, fearing it was a bad fit and had probably been written with someone else in mind. It was: Producers were set on Ty Burrell, who perfectly embodies rubber-faced real-estate broker Phil Dunphy but had met resistance from ABC brass.

In 2009, during a lengthy timeout following the flameout of Friends spinoff Joey, the Modern Family pilot script "came across my desk with an offer to play Ty Burrell’s role," LeBlanc told USA TODAY. (Producer 20th Century Fox Television confirms this). "I remember reading it thinking, this is a really good script, (but) I’m not the guy for this. I’d be doing the project an injustice to take this. I know what I can do, I know what I can’t do. Plus, I’m having too much fun laying on the couch.”

More: Matt LeBlanc on 'Friends,' 'Episodes,' 'Top Gear' and 'Man with a Plan'

LeBlanc could have reunited with Ed O'Neill, who plays family patriarch Jay Pritchett: One of LeBlanc's early roles was on Fox's short-lived spinoff Top of the Heap, after a guest role on Married ... With Children as Kelly Bundy's dim boyfriend, Vinnie Verducci. (Joseph Bologna, who died this week, played his dad).

But after he spurned the Family offer, Burrell prevailed, helped make Family ABC's biggest comedy hit in years, and the show begins its ninth season next month, with a 10th guaranteed.

But LeBlanc did help out in another way: Before the cast staged a sickout and sued 20th Century Fox in a 2012 salary dispute, co-star Jesse Tyler Fergsuon called him for negotiating advice since the Friends cast had similarly banded together for negotiating leverage.

He told Ferguson, who plays gay son Mitchell Pritchett: "You have to walk out, or they won’t take you seriously," LeBlanc recalls. "If you stick together, you have power."

But he couldn't resist a delicious prank: On the day the cast huddled together after refusing to show up for work, LeBlanc texted him: "I said, 'Hey, I killed it as Mitch today at the table read, thanks for the opportunity!' "