‘Friends’ actress Lisa Kudrow addresses the criticism in an interview with The Sunday Times UK about the lack of diversity on the popular 90’s show, which boasted an all-white cast. If the show were filmed in 2020 it’d definitely look different, she admits.
Portraying Phoebe Buffay throughout the show’s ten seasons (1994-2004), Kudrow, 56, says if the show were filmed in today’s times, “it would not be an all-white cast, for sure.” She adds, “I am not sure what else…but, to me, it should be looked at as a time capsule, not for what they did wrong. Also, this show thought it was very progressive. There was a guy whose wife discovered she was gay and pregnant, and they raised the child together. We had surrogacy too. It was, at that time, progressive.”
Explaining why the show is still relevant in 2020, she says, “It’s a fun comedy, but it’s also about people connecting, and part of what appeals about it now is that young people have this unconscious nostalgia for personal connection. And not just right now during the pandemic, but before that.”
In addition to Kudrow’s remarks, in January, her co-star David Schwimmer, who played Ross Gellar, also spoke out about the lack of diversity; claiming he was “well aware” and “campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color.”
