Ever since the BBC strapped Joey from Friends into the Top Gear hot seat the show has spun from one controversy to another. This time, things will be different, says Matt LeBlanc. And he invited Event behind the scenes of the souped-up new series to prove it
Top Gear is back – but this time the engine has been retuned and the main driver has a great big smile on his face. ‘We’ve grown into this,’ says Matt LeBlanc, the Hollywood star who unexpectedly finds himself steering one of the greatest – and most British – television shows ever out of a dangerous spin after all the controversies and arguments of the past. ‘We’re doing it our own way now.’
LeBlanc and his team promise a kinder, funnier and – in their words – less cruel Top Gear as they finally come close to fixing what Jeremy Clarkson broke by punching a producer who couldn’t bring him a hot meal at the end of a cold day’s filming. The sacking of Clarkson, his departure to Amazon with his mates and co-stars Richard Hammond and James May, and the reboot under Chris Evans are history now.
Matt LeBlanc and his team promise a kinder, funnier and – in their words – less cruel Top Gear
There’s a new cheerfulness and optimism about the Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey that is Top Gear’s base, as former Friends star LeBlanc returns for a second series as host, alongside Rory Reid (the one who sent in an audition tape) and Chris Harris (the one who used to review cars on YouTube).
‘We’re trying to make it a show that appeals not only to car-lovers and petrolheads but something the whole family can watch, whether you like cars or not,’ says LeBlanc. In other words, they’re attempting to recapture the spirit that once gave Top Gear a worldwide audience of 350 million.
Last year’s series was aimed squarely at the show’s car-loving core fans. This time the stilted, scripted studio chat has been cut back, the glamour and adventure of the filmed sections ramped up and – most importantly – the three strangers who were thrown together as presenters have become real friends, trade jokes and banter with genuine warmth.
LeBlanc is the undisputed leader of the pack, as Event discovers during an exclusive day behind the scenes. The 50-year-old actor is lounging in a Hollywood-style Winnebago by the side of the famous Top Gear track, looking very laid back in a plaid shirt with a woolly hat jammed down over his steel-grey hair. Languid and charming, he chats away in that instantly recognisable gruff, deep voice about everything from electric cars (‘the future’) to driverless cars (‘not for me’) and cyclists (‘move over!’).
‘We’re trying to make it a show that appeals not only to car-lovers and petrolheads but something the whole family can watch, whether you like cars or not,’ says LeBlanc
He’ll reveal what he really thinks about his former Top Gear colleague Chris Evans, and laugh about how everyone expects him to be dim like his Friends character, Joey. ‘They speak slowly to me,’ he says. ‘But it’s not something I can get away from. Friends was a big show. You’re in people’s homes and they feel subconsciously like they have a relationship with you as that character. So they speak to me like they would to him.’
A new generation is now discovering Joey for the first time, as Netflix reshows Friends in its entirety. ‘I was walking down the street and this kid of 13 or 14 stopped and said, “Oh my God! Are you Joey’s dad?” I said, “Scram!” That’s what Joey’s dad would say…’
Does he mind still being taken for Joey? ‘I get a kick out of it. I always have the upper hand in any conversation because I’m smarter than they think.’
He is, too. Smart enough to know that this series of Top Gear has to work or it’s the end of the road. Last year, its audience dipped below two million, although viewing habits have changed and at least a million more people watched the series on catch-up. ‘Top Gear is over,’ wrote one former fan on Twitter. Another said: ‘Top Gear is dead, The Grand Tour is killing it’ – that was a reference to the lavish Amazon series hosted by Clarkson, Hammond and May, who all made a point of wishing the new Top Gear well, saying there’s room enough for two great shows.
The Top Gear team, from top: The Stig, Rory Reid, Matt LeBlanc and Chris Harris
But LeBlanc and friends knew they had to find their own unique style – so for this series they are playing to his strengths with a new quirky brand of semi-improvised comedy. This is best seen when the relentlessly optimistic American and the deadpan Englishman Harris go camping out in the deep, dark forests of California, driving a succession of spectacular off-road vehicles in pursuit of a mythical beast. ‘That film represents a new direction for the show,’ says LeBlanc. ‘We have a giant Ford F-650, which is like a pick-up truck on steroids, with a 24ft trailer from which we keep pulling out machines. We have new electric dirt bikes, which are amazing. We have a thing called the SkyRunner, an off-road buggy that flies. We review all these machines, but there’s also this crazy adventure we’re on, looking for Bigfoot.’
He truly believes there is a giant half-man, half-ape out there. ‘You have a believer in me and a sceptic in Chris. To the people of that area, Bigfoot is real. When you witness that first-hand, you think they can’t all be crazy.’ It’s a truly funny section that makes you realise why crew members say there is a budding bromance between the two presenters.
Harris, a motoring journalist seven years younger than LeBlanc, suddenly finds himself looking for laughs alongside a comedy legend – and he knows how unlikely that is.
Japanese drifting cars. The new warm and fuzzy Top Gear is even kind about the sorts of little cars that were once objects of derision
LeBlanc certainly knows his cars, having fixed and adapted plenty of them since his youth in Massachusetts
‘You take two relative unknowns from the internet and stick ’em with Joey from Friends? It’s random, but it’s going to take time, isn’t it?’ laughs Harris. ‘We didn’t have any chemistry last time. It’s hard to have that with people you don’t know, particularly when one of them is one of the most recognisable faces on Earth!’
The trio have a very different style to Clarkson, Hammond and May, so no more dodgy jokes about foreigners, jibes at environmentalists or provocative acts like driving through Argentina with a number plate relating to the Falklands War. If they take the mickey out of each other, they do it gently. ‘Our brand of humour is different to our predecessors,’ says Harris. ‘Their shtick was based around a bit more niggle and cruelty, because that’s what people expected of them. We’re not bound by that.’
Meanwhile, Rory Reid, 38, is all fizz and fascinating facts as he takes to the road on his own or races V8 cars across the Utah desert with his chums. The new warm and fuzzy Top Gear is even kind about the sorts of little cars that were once objects of derision, strapped to rockets or used in demolition derbies.
Matt LeBlanc in Friends with David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston
‘We made a charming film about the Citroën 2CV,’ says LeBlanc, who drove one through Normandy with a basket of eggs on his lap. ‘In the past, a car like that would have been something to take and destroy. This was more of a love letter to the 2CV.’
LeBlanc certainly knows his cars, having fixed and adapted plenty of them since his youth in Massachusetts, and his car collection now includes a scarily powerful Porsche 997 GT2 RS. His home is still in the United States, where he was previously married to model Melissa McKnight for three years and with whom he had a daughter. Lately, he has been seen out and about with Aurora Mulligan, a 32-year-old Irish producer for Top Gear.
The show is keen to tackle the big issues such as driverless cars. ‘I’m not a fan of the idea,’ says LeBlanc. ‘The car represents a sense of freedom, it broadens your horizon. With the driverless car you might as well be in a taxi. I assume there is a place in the world for autonomous cars. There’s not a place for it in my world, yet.’
He shares that feeling with Clarkson, who claimed he was nearly killed in one, but when it comes to electric cars, they are at odds. Clarkson jokes that buying an electric car is ‘as daft as buying a petrol-powered food blender’, but LeBlanc loves them.
LeBlanc with Nasa pilot Dean Neeley in Nevada. The show is keen to tackle the big issues such as driverless cars
‘They’re the future,’ he says. ‘The power you can get from an electric motor is immediate. If the technology and the battery power is right, nothing else delivers that instant torque. I do love the sound of a V8, but as great as it is, the combustion engine is destined for extinction.’
The dirt-bike sequence looks quite dangerous, so what does he tell his daughter about all this? ‘It’s dangerous but I tend to downplay the close calls. We don’t need to discuss them at the dinner table, everybody gets worried.’
The whole Top Gear team was shocked when Richard Hammond nearly died in an electric supercar crash in the Alps last year, and that has made them even more careful. ‘A risk assessment is made on everything. Would it be more dangerous if I was the 18-year-old Matt LeBlanc presenting Top Gear? Yeah! I’m 50 now. You have a few good whacks and you go, “You know what? That hurts! I’m going to be more careful”.’
Reid admits he was still alarmed when the three of them drove a Jaguar, a Mustang and a McLaren through Utah for the new series. ‘We were driving up this steep canyon on switchback roads, and you look down over the edge and gasp at all these mangled wrecks. If you lose concentration for a split second, it’s curtains. We’re out in the real world doing stunts and things have the potential to go wrong, so you need to keep your wits about you.’
That was brought home again last month, when an Alpine sports car being driven by Harris and Eddie Jordan on a stage of the Monte Carlo Rally caught fire and was destroyed. Neither man was hurt. LeBlanc says that the closest he’s come to danger making this series was driving tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka.
‘Chris and I drove straight into each other a couple of times. It was funny. They were used, banged-up tuk-tuks. They did a little rubbing and bumping but nothing too dangerous.’
LeBlanc rents a home in central London and says he’d be far more scared on a bike in the capital. ‘I wouldn’t ride a bicycle there – it just seems like a death sentence.’
He has issues with cyclists. ‘It’s when there are three or four of them, side-by-side so they can chat – but they don’t move out of the way. That’s frustrating. Do I bump ’em with the car? No. But I maybe give a tap on the horn like, “Beep-beep! Come on, move over!”’
Potential road rage aside, he’s a terrific driver, as viewers found out when he came to Britain in 2011 to film the first series of Episodes and appeared on Top Gear.
LeBlanc was the fastest Star in a Reasonably Priced Car for two Top Gear series running, and he presented a ‘greatest races’ compilation for Clarkson, Hammond and May. He was drafted in by the BBC when Chris Evans took over the show for one series, and there were rumours that they fell out. LeBlanc insists not.
Harris takes a sumo wrestler for a drive in Japan. ‘Top Gear’ returns to BBC2 on Feb 25
‘I didn’t have a falling out with Chris. He and I didn’t hang out after work. Not because we didn’t like each other – he was busy with his thing, I was busy with my thing.’
Have they had any contact since? ‘No, but I had a lot of laughs with Chris, I really did.’
The racing driver Sabine Schmitz and former F1 boss Eddie Jordan still make films in the new series but they definitely take a back seat. So with no women in the main line-up, is this a show for boys and their toys?
‘I can’t even begin to disagree more,’ says Harris with irritation. ‘I have more insane female friends when it comes to this kind of machinery than I do men. Some of my girl mates will just jump on dirt bikes and go off into the woods like lunatics.’
Fine, but they’re not presenting Top Gear. The lack of prominent women remains a weakness in the show. There is, however, one surprising possibility. Some say the new Stig may be a woman. Having taken a close look at that mysterious, silent driver in the white suit and full face mask, I can say it’s a definite possibility that ‘he’ is actually a tall, athletic ‘she’.
Today, comedian Rob Brydon has completed his laps out on the track as the guest Star in a Reasonably Fast Car, so Event is challenged to go for a spin with The Stig. What a driver. Hurtling around the track and drifting through the corners feels exhilarating but never scary, as The Stig is always in control.
Afterwards, LeBlanc grins again. ‘You like that, huh?’ And for a moment yes, it really is just like a new episode of Friends. The one where Joey’s dad gets to do a petrolhead’s dream job and hang out with his new British mates. ‘What a way to make a living!’
‘Top Gear’ returns to BBC2 on Feb 25, immediately followed by behind-the-scenes show ‘Extra Gear’ on the BBC iPlayer