Lisa Kudrow is known best for her portrayal as the enigmatic Phoebe Buffay on the '90s TV phenomenon Friends. However, despite its influence, Friends is routinely mocked for having little to no people of color anywhere at any time throughout its run, which Kurdrow recently addressed.
Kudrow recently reflected on Friends getting the flak it has for its notable lack of diversity in its ten seasons on the air. Kudrow presented a rather unique take on why the show was executed the way it was by telling it from the show creators' perspective.
During an interview with the Daily Beast, Kudrow said she believed that because Friends was about their experience of life after college, the showrunners could only write about what they knew personally, so they couldn't have written racially diverse characters. "Well, I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college. And for shows especially, when it’s going to be a comedy that’s character-driven, you write what you know," Kudrow said. "They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of color. I think at that time, the big problem that I was seeing was, 'Where’s the apprenticeship?'"
Kudrow has a point that showrunners who are writing a show based on their own personal experiences may find it difficult to write about people of other races since they don't know their own experiences. However, there is a simple fix to that, which is hiring people of color to capture their own experiences. At the same time, it was the 1990s. Back then, shows did not consider diversity a major priority in their cast or in their crew. Simple as that. That has since changed, and the world has seen some excellent shows that boast racially diverse casts in the years following.
In hindsight, Friends should have made the effort to try to make the show a little more diverse during its day. It's hard not to notice it in 2022 when the shows that have followed it have emphasized diversity a lot more than Friends did back then. If people want to hold it against Friends for its lack of people of color, they're within their rights to do so. However, here's something to consider. Viewers can absolutely condone Friends for its lack of diversity and still enjoy the show anyway. While its lack of diversity has aged like milk, the material itself still holds up all these years later. It's relatable to hang out with the people you love and care about while figuring out what you're going to do with your life. Friends was one of the first shows to portray that time in people's lives.
People forget how mind-blowing it was to the public for Michelle to have a Black friend on Full House, or that The Simpsons almost had one of their episodes banned for having an openly gay character. Nowadays, that sounds straight-up ridiculous, but that just goes to show that the world has come a long way since the 1990s when it comes to entertainment and diversity. Viewers can celebrate how much inclusion there is in television and movies just like viewers can enjoy TV shows that didn't have that when they aired.
Friends can currently be streamed on HBO Max
Source: The Daily Beast