About

Irish Uncle Matt LeBlanc refers to parodies imagining actor Matt LeBlanc, on the set of the Friends reunion special, as an Irish uncle. Most parodies take the form of tweets showing pictures of LeBlanc on the set of the reunion with captions written in Irish dialect.

Origin

On May 27th, 2021, HBO aired the Friends: Reunion Special, bringing back the original cast of the sitcom Friends, including Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey in the show, decades after the show went off the air.

On May 28th, 2021, Redditor sonoforiel posted a picture of LeBlanc on the set of the reunion to /r/Ireland^[2] with the caption, "Joey bringing big Lorry Driver from Starbane at the BBQ after a child's christening energy," gaining over 3,700 points (shown below).

Spread

Over the following several days, Twitter users, particularly Irish Twitter users, began joking that LeBlanc resembled an Irish man. On May 28th, 2021, user @WretchedMorgan^[1] tweeted, "I enjoyed Matt Le Blanc’s “Da’ sitting on the couch during a quick stop at your grans” performance," gaining over 660 retweets and 13,000 likes (shown below, left). User @beyonfaye^[3] tweeted a picture of LeBlanc with the caption, "And cmere to me what sort of jobs would you be getting with that arts degree? You wouldn’t go into teaching no?", gaining over 730 retweets and 10,000 likes (shown below, right).

The meme was widely covered by media outlets, including Buzzfeed,^[4] CNN^[5] and Insider.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References