Lisa Kudrow has weighed in on the lack of diversity in Friends and claimed the show’s creators had “no business writing stories about people of colour”.
The actress, who played Phoebe Buffay for 10 seasons, said David Crane and Marta Kauffman likely wrote the series about their own lives and therefore did not have the experiences of being a person of color.
Lisa has previously admitted the series lacked representation, stating that if the hit show was made today, it would include a more diverse cast.
“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, 59, told the Daily Beast.
“They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of colour. I think at that time, the big problem that I was seeing was, ‘Where’s the apprenticeship?””
Show creator Marta Kauffman has also publicly expressed the “embarrassment” of how she “didn’t know better” about diversity 25 years ago.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” Kauffman said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.
“Admitting 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.”
“It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism.
“I’ve been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist. And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman’s perspective.”
Kauffman has since pledged $4 million to support African American students in the US.
The Marta F. Kauffman ’78 Professorship in African and African American Studies “will support a distinguished scholar with a concentration in the study of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora” and “assist the department to recruit more expert scholars and teachers , map long-term academic and research priorities and provide new opportunities for students to engage in interdisciplinary scholarship,” the Waltham, Massachusetts-based university announced.
“It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism,” Kauffman, who is reportedly worth nearly $600 million, told Brandeis.
“I’ve been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist. And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman’s perspective.”
Kauffman told the LA Times that she has received “nothing but love” since announcing the pledge along with “people acknowledging it was long overdue.”
“In this case, I’m finally, literally putting my money where my mouth is,” Kauffman said. “I feel I was finally able to make some difference in the conversation.”
“I have to say, after agreeing to this and when I stopped sweating, it didn’t unburden me, but it lifted me up. But until in my next production, I can do it right, it isn’t over.
“I want to make sure from now on in every production I do that I am conscious in hiring people of color and actively pursue young writers of colour. I want to know I will act differently from now on. And then I will feel unburdened.”
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