{"id":43969,"date":"2022-08-13T05:14:48","date_gmt":"2022-08-13T05:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lisa-kudrow-defends-lack-of-diversity-in-friends\/"},"modified":"2022-08-13T05:14:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T05:14:48","slug":"lisa-kudrow-defends-lack-of-diversity-in-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/lisa-kudrow-defends-lack-of-diversity-in-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Kudrow Defends Lack Of Diversity In \u201cFriends\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As far as timelessly popular sitcoms go, NBC’s friends<\/i> is easily one of the strongest containers.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Having aired in the late ’90s and early ’00s, friends<\/i> \u2014 which follows a lovable group of twentysomethings living in New York \u2014 is still undeniably a huge hit amongst fans today, especially ever since it was added to Netflix in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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But, in recent years, certain aspects of friends<\/i> have been reexamined and lack of viewers \u2014 namely the the lack of diversity within its all-white main cast, which includes Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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And some of the main cast themselves have addressed the heaps of criticism friends<\/i> has faced over its casting, with David \u2014 who played Ross Geller over the show’s ten seasons \u2014 even revealing a couple of years ago that he’d made a \u201cconscious push\u201d for the show to hire more diverse actors.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cI was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian American woman, and later I dated African American women. That was a very conscious push on my part.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Well, now, another of friends’s<\/i> main cast members, Lisa, has addressed the lack of diversity, seemingly justifying the writers’ decisions as she claimed it was based on their personal experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Lisa, who portrayed fan-favorite Phoebe Buffay, sat down with The Daily Beast on Wednesday for a wide-ranging interview, during which she was asked how she feels about the diversity on the show.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cI feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis [University] and wrote about their lives after college,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd for shows especially, when it’s going to be a comedy that’s character-driven, you write what you know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cThey 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?’\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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However, Lisa went on to note that if friends<\/i> were to be remade today, it would need to include a \u201cdifferent\u201d and \u201cmore diverse\u201d cast.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cI think if there would ever be anything like [a Friends<\/i> movie]if Martha [Kauffman] and David [Crane] ever signed off on anything like that, it would have to be a different cast at that age,\u201d she said, referring to the show’s cocreators. \u201cI think it would need to be more current \u2014 and more diverse representation is not a bad idea, you know?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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In a similar vein, Lisa explained a couple of years ago that a friends<\/i> reboot would be \u201ccompletely different\u201d from the original series. \u201cIt would not be an all-white cast, for sure,\u201d she said, before clarifying that she feels the show \u201cshould be looked at as a time capsule, not for what [it] did wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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What’s more, cocreator Marta recently expressed regret over the writers’ decision to include an all-white main cast. So much so, in fact, that just a couple of months ago, she pledged $4 million to Brandeis University’s African and African American studies department.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cI’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,\u201d she said. \u201cAdmitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Marta’s pledge came just over a year after friends<\/i> executive producer Kevin Bright addressed criticism of the show’s \u201call-white, heteronormative\u201d main casting.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Echoing Lisa’s latest remarks about sticking to writing \u201cwhat you know,\u201d Kevin explained that he and the other writers based on their casting on their own experiences when they were \u201cyoung and in New York.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cWe didn’t intend to have an all-white cast,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was not the goal, either. Obviously, the chemistry between these six actors speaks for itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Kevin went on to note that it’s \u201cimportant for today’s shows to be reflective of the ways society truly is,\u201d though swiftly maintained that he had no regrets over his casting choices.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cI don’t have any regrets other than hindsight,\u201d he said. \u201cI would have been insane not to hire those six actors. What can I say? I wish Lisa was Black? I’ve loved this cast. I loved the show and I loved the experience. I know Marta has a different feeling about it. I think it affects us all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Interestingly, Marta also recently admitted to feeling regret over the show’s handling of another subject surrounding one of the main character’s transgender parents.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Fans will likely remember that Chandler Bing, portrayed by Matthew Perry, had a transgender parent whose stage name was \u201cHelena Handbasket.\u201d However, the characters would always misgender her, referring to her as \u201cChandler’s dad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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Speaking about the subject to BBC News last month, Marta addressed the fact that the show \u201ckept referring to [Helena] as ‘Chandler’s father,’ even though Chandler’s father was trans.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\u201cPronouns were not yet something that I understood, so we didn’t refer to that character as ‘she,’\u201d she admitted. \u201cThat was a mistake.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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