With a smart new Showtime series, Episodes, the 43-year-old actor formerly known as Joey Tribbiani has finally found a way to turn his signature role to his advantage

DETAILS: We’ve become so used to a certain image of you that some people seem surprised by the graying hair. Matt LeBlanc: I started going gray in my early twenties. I remember on Friends, in the very beginning, putting the stuff on the sides. Then it became a full shampoo job. People are saying, “Oh, he’s going for the George Clooney thing.” I’m not going for the George Clooney thing—I’m getting old. I’m going for the inevitable.

DETAILS: How did it feel reading the pilot of your new series, Episodes, in which you play a character named Matt LeBlanc, whom a pair of producers are vehemently opposed to casting in their show? Matt LeBlanc: I’ve been there. I’ve been pitched for movies and producers say they feel that seeing me would pull the audience out of the movie. In the eighth or ninth year of Friends, during some of the renegotiation conversations, someone said, “We don’t want to be pigeonholed as these characters forever.” And I remember thinking, “That ship has sailed.”

DETAILS: The curse of Joey. Matt LeBlanc: I’ve met a lot of people who will literally speak slowly to me. People call me Joey all the time. I take it as a compliment. There’s no point in correcting them. But I’m much more even-keeled and subdued and relaxed than Joey Tribbiani. Now, with this new role, it’s almost this trick I can play on the audience: “Is he really like that, or is he not?”

DETAILS: You’ve had your run-ins with the tabloids. Matt LeBlanc: Those guys pop out of the woodwork. One morning, it was around Season 2 of Friends, I got a call from my publicist at 6 a.m. She said, “Thank God you’re alive. There’s a rumor that you overdosed and died last night.” I said, “Is that why there’s a helicopter over my house right now?” She said they were going to report it on the news. So I hung up, called my mother, and said, “If you see a report that I died last night, it’s not true.” I firmly believe they have a big wheel at the tabloids, and they spin it, and when your name comes up, they’re like, “All right, let’s make something up about him.”

DETAILS: How has that intense level of exposure affected your dating life? Matt LeBlanc: I have a girlfriend, and she’s an actor, so that’s easy. Before, my guard was really high. It’s like, this person can Google me and find out so much. Who are they? I can’t Google them. You always question people’s intentions. That may be a combination of having money, having fame, and being a little older. When I was young, a one-night stand was really fun. Now the aggravation that goes with it isn’t worth it. It’s like, “Okay, fine, but it sounds like a pain in the ass.”

DETAILS: What did you do after Joey got canceled? Matt LeBlanc: I took four or five years off. There were a lot of things that were spinning out of control. My daughter had been diagnosed with an illness, my marriage was falling apart, the writing was on the wall that the show was going away—that being the least of those three major problems. I was extremely stressed, and then it was all kind of poof!—quiet. So I said, “You know, this is a good time to crawl under a rock.” Literally, an actual rock. I can show you a picture.

Since leaving the 90210 ZIP code, the actor has endured cracks about his hair, his rap album, and his flagging career. But he wakes up next to Megan Fox every morning, so who’s laughing now?

By Amy Wallace

Originally appeared in Details, October 2010

Details: You were on the original Beverly Hills 90210 for 10 years—a show that defined America to the world.

Brian Austin Green: In a bright, flashy, horrible-hair kind of way. Let’s be honest.

Details: The hair didn’t seem as horrible at the time.

Brian Austin Green: I was just talking to the guy behind the bar, who said, “I used to love the original 90210 . . . the new one is not so good.” And my response is, “Of course not.” 90210 only worked because of that time period—because the world didn’t have access to a lifestyle like that. The Internet wasn’t what it is now. With TMZ and Paris Hilton wrecking cars and people being chased on freeways, there’s nothing interesting about Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is nothing anymore.

Details: Do the paparazzi hound you?

Brian Austin Green: It wasn’t so much of a problem before Megan, but once Transformers hit, that was it. I had never experienced paparazzi on that level, because during 90210 they were still developing pictures and selling them by hand. It was a whole different experience.

Details: Some of the glamour and magic of Hollywood has been eroded.

Brian Austin Green: As someone who still loves movies and television, I honestly don’t want to know what Mel Gibson is like at home. I want to watch Braveheart. I don’t want any of the personal stuff. I’m not saying Mel’s choices are the best—obviously not—but it’s a shame that no one will enjoy a Mel Gibson film in the same way again. Mel made a business out of being nuts on camera, out of his fucking mind. And it’s like, what, do you expect him to be totally normal at home? It’s not possible.

Details: So the less you know, the better when it comes to actors?

Brian Austin Green: I think the most interesting people in television, film, and music are the ones we know the least about. I mean, Prince—it took years for me to know what his actual voice sounded like. Because I never saw him do an interview. I remember—I don’t know if it was Arsenio Hall that I saw him on—but the first thing he did was talk in this really high voice. And then he laughed and said, “No, I’m kidding.” He’s got that deep voice! And we were like, “Prince got me!” Because we had no idea.

Details: What was it like to be famous in the nineties?

Brian Austin Green: Car shows. Mall appearances. And Grad Nite at Disneyland. Times were simple then. But now—just today we had a guy in the grocery store with his camera phone videotaping us walking down the aisles. And there’s nothing I can do about it, other than take the guy’s phone and drive off with it. Then there’d be a video with a headline: STEALING CAMERAS? WHAT’S BECOME OF BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN? THE MARRIAGE MUST NOT BE GOING WELL. AND HE’S NOT WORKING MUCH LATELY.

Details: You’re on the new season of Desperate Housewives. How did you land that?

Brian Austin Green: I was in Hawaii on my honeymoon, and I got a call from my manager saying, “Marc Cherry wants to sit down with you. He’d like to have you read. Just a couple scenes.” I said, “Of course.” I’m not against auditioning. I audition for everything. The best parts you have to audition for. The ones that I’m offered are the ones like Megalodon 2: This Time It’s Personal.

Details: You play a buff contractor.

Brian Austin Green: Sweaty guy with a hammer. A lot of tank tops. I’ve got to say it’s a whole new world for me. I’ve never played a hunky guy. There was one day when I had to take my shirt off. I must have done 400 push-ups. I feel like I understand the pressure that women go through. I feel, like, all-woman at times.

By Amy Wallace

Originally appeared in Details August 2010

Details: When Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters, there will be those who—on seeing Gordon Gekko complete a lengthy prison sentence—will ask, “Wait a minute: Greed is bad?” Why do you think so many people misunderstood the message of the original Wall Street? Oliver Stone: I was somewhat amazed by the whole continuing cult thing around Gekko. I mean, I was being facetious. Greed is not good. Greed is an awful thing. In the eighties we entered into a period of perversity which I had never seen before. I thought the world would right itself. And every day it’s just become more absurd.

Details: You once said, “Money was the sex of the eighties.” What is money now? Oliver Stone: Money is still sex, but it’s steroid sex. I mean, a million dollars was a lot of money in ’87. Now you can’t even open a hedge fund, it seems, unless you’ve got a billion.

Details: Your last Oscar came over 20 years ago for Born on the Fourth of July. Do you feel pressure to win another? Oliver Stone: You can’t fall in love with Oscars. You have to look at it like a high-school presidency or something. You know: You were most popular at that time. When I won, thank God, it wasn’t a madhouse like it’s become. These independent producers started to come up and really campaign viciously. It was so ugly, after I got nominated for Nixon as cowriter in 1996, I never went back. Woody Allen did the smartest thing. And Kubrick. They didn’t give a fuck.

Details: You’ve said that a lot of your critics over the years have confused you with the characters you were depicting. Does that still happen? Oliver Stone: No, less so. I’m not so much of a firebrand. I would spout off when I was a younger man. Get angry. Pissed off. I realized late in life that I could have been like the Coen brothers: Shut up completely and just let the films speak for themselves.

Details: In a review of Platoon, one critic wondered aloud whether you were “using filmmaking as a substitute for drugs.” Have you ever found a suitable substitute for drugs? Oliver Stone: Oh, sure—money, sex, God, Buddha. There’re so many substitutes. Frankly, I don’t smoke grass anymore. I gave it up. I just wanted to see if I could function without it. But it did save my ass in Vietnam. I could have become a very bitter man. I also did a lot of psychedelics that I thought helped me. The worst drug I ever did, and I’ve admitted to it, was cocaine, from ’79 to ’81. That I regret, because I do think it hurt my brain cells, and I don’t think I was as creative as I should have been.

Details: Is it true you were in the process of kicking cocaine while writing the coke-drenched Scarface? Oliver Stone: No. I stopped before the writing—cold turkey. My attitude was “Farewell to coke.” I mean, it took so much money off me, I said, “I’m going to get something back.”

Details: At 63, is writing a movie harder or easier?
Oliver Stone: It’s always been a bitch.

The outspoken Family Guy creator has amassed a legion of loyal fans and almost as many mortal enemies—and he has a hundred million reasons to keep the fart jokes coming.

By Amy Wallace

August 2010 Details magazine

Details: Thanks to a $100 million deal with FOX, you’re the highest-paid writer-producer on TV. How has life changed? Seth MacFarlane: I have the same job. I go to the same place every day and work with the same people. I bought a new house. I have a car that I like—an Aston Martin—for Sunday drives in the country. I bought a piece of a plane so I could avoid the airports. But look, I’ll still go through the Burger King drive-thru.

Details: Whopper? Seth MacFarlane: Well, Whopper Jr. these days, now that I’m in my thirties.

Details: Are women just crawling out of the woodwork? Seth MacFarlane: Believe it or not, I have about the same success rate as anyone else. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss. When you’re dealing with women of substance and quality, success in Hollywood can be something you’re actually fighting a perception of. Without naming names, there are certainly a lot of people who do what I do who have taken enough hedonistic advantage of their position as to put a negative stigma on the job. If you’re a producer, you’re somebody to check into.

Details: A player. Seth MacFarlane: Exactly. I tried that for a little while. It’s somewhat dissatisfying. With the sort of woman who’s worth spending a significant amount of your time with, you do oftentimes have to press a little bit to insist that they get to know you.

Details: To prove you’re not a cad? Seth MacFarlane: A douche. I don’t own one wool knit cap, though, so I think I’ve got that going for me.

Details: I understand you recently went to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner as Larry King’s date. Seth MacFarlane: Yes. I did his show, and he asked me during one of the breaks if I wanted to go, and I had no other plans, so I said, “Sure, why not?” It’s kind of a hilarious competition among the press with regard to who can rustle up the biggest celebrity. Larry must have been desperate, resorting to me.

Details: You were his arm candy. Seth MacFarlane: I was Larry King’s arm candy. He bought me the most beautiful gown. It was the sweetest thing.

Details: You recently wrote—and will direct—an R-rated live-action/CGI comedy called Ted, about a man and his teddy bear. Are you concerned this could be your Howard the Duck? Seth MacFarlane: That thought has crossed my mind. There’s an old episode of Star Trek about this perfect society where the people live in absolute harmony with each other, but the one catch is every day there’s something called the red hour when they all go berserk. I think that’s a good analogy for Howard the Duck‘s place in George Lucas’ career. But there’s something exciting about entering an unfamiliar medium that you can possibly completely fuck up. The danger of career annihilation is kind of appealing.

Details: The word is that the R rating is truly a “hard R.” Seth MacFarlane: “Hard R,” I think, is a term that is used in features, certainly with comedy, in the same way that the phrase “about a dysfunctional family” is used in television. It’s sort of tossed about with reckless abandon, even when it doesn’t apply. Ted is definitely an R-rated comedy, but the story is relatively, dare I say, sweet.

Details: You dominate Sunday nights on FOX, voicing many of the characters on your shows, which—combined with the reruns of Family Guy on TBS—makes you difficult to avoid. Do you ever turn on your television and hear your voice coming out of it? Seth MacFarlane: It’s a very fashionable thing to say, obviously, but I really don’t watch a lot of TV. The buffet is a little lacking these days. There are no shows on television right now that genuinely make me laugh, with the exception of Real Time With Bill Maher.

Details: You once compared Arizona’s immigration policy to Nazi Germany’s. Seth MacFarlane: My phrasing of that comment was a little bit inelegant, but the spirit of it is intact. It was odd to me that the Anti-Defamation League got so up in arms about that. They said, “How can you compare this to the Holocaust?” which seemed to me an utterly idiotic response. No one is comparing Arizona to the Holocaust. But in the 1920s, everyone thought the Nazis were a crazy fringe group that would vanish. So we’re saying, “Okay, here’s an example of something in its early stages—it could go nowhere; it could go somewhere very bad.” We point it out, and we’re attacked.

Originally appeared in Details November, 2009

BY: Amy Wallace

Paul Reubens is doing one of the things he does best: obsessing. “I am constantly hoping that, like, I’m still relevant at all,” he says in a voice—higher than most men’s, slightly nasal—that’s still familiar, even after all these years.

Wandering around the Hollywood Museum, just a few blocks from his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he has lingered over the red-and-white vintage bicycle that he rode in his 1985 movie Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. He has appraised the display containing the skinny gray suit (with red bow tie) that was his uniform on his Saturday-morning TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which aired on CBS from 1986 to 1991. But it’s not the Pee-wee Herman memorabilia, which sits near W.C. Fields’ top hat and Brendan Fraser’s George of the Jungle loincloth, that sets off Reubens’ OCD. Instead, the trigger is Bob Hope’s honorary Oscar. “When I was a kid, I’d always watch Bob Hope and go, like, ‘I know he must’ve been funny, but is he past his prime?’” Reubens says. “What I’m trying to prove now is that I still have it, I’m still around—I still am Pee-wee Herman, and Pee-wee Herman is still funny. So I’m feeling very Bob Hope—hoping I don’t see a parallel.”

Yes, that’s right: The 57-year-old actor, best known for embodying the oddball man-child with the puppet friends (and also for two tawdry scrapes with the law), is about to don the skinny suit again to perform as Pee-wee for the first time in 19 years. Starting in early January in Los Angeles, Reubens will star in an elaborate live show in which Pee-wee yearns to fly, gets his wish, and then gives it away. For anyone who likes allegories, as Reubens does, this one is a doozy.

Consider: Since the age of 5, when he asked his father to build him a stage in their Peekskill, New York, basement, Reubens wanted to entertain. After completing high school in south Florida, he went to art school in Los Angeles, where he joined the improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings and developed a skit about a man-child who wanted to be a famous comic. He took the first name from Pee-wee-brand harmonicas. In a fit of pique, after he lost out on a role on Saturday Night Live—to Gilbert Gottfried, of all people—Reubens borrowed $5,000 from his parents to turn that skit into a stage show. It spawned an HBO special (The Pee-wee Herman Show), two feature films (Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Big Top Pee-wee), and ultimately the hit TV show. Then, while on a self-imposed hiatus from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the once-high-flying Reubens fell to earth.