What it's like to share a name with Joey Lawrence's Melissa & Joey character

Mel Magazine

"A decade ago, my identity was stolen by a male nanny in Toledo, Ohio," says Joseph Longo. "I learned of my fate on a weekday around 3:30 p.m., just as I was settling into my after-school routine. As a latchkey kid with his head in the clouds and few extracurricular activities, every day when I arrived back home, I poured myself a pint glass of lemon-flavored Arizona Iced Tea, popped some Totino’s Pizza Rolls in the microwave and sat down on a big red recliner to watch trash sitcoms with cringe laugh tracks. They say, however, that your greatest loves will hurt you the most, and it was mid-pepperoni pizza bite that I discovered that an aging sitcom star had taken everything from me. The thief was Joey Lawrence. The Blossom hunk was now starring on the sensible ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey alongside fellow 1990s teen icon Melissa Joan Hart. He played Joe Longo, a former high-profile commodities trader who lost it all in a Ponzi scheme and started working as a live-in nanny for local politician Mel Burke (Hart). My immediate reaction: Excuse me, sir, that is not the Joe Longo brand....It haunts me to this day."