Lisa Kudrow says Friends writers had "no business" writing about people of color

such is the reality of pc

That last sentence is crucial to this whole debate. Write about the things you know, but maybe hire some voices different to your own for your writers' room if your show becomes massive.

This thread is so 2018. The whole woke is over and it’s like dragging something up from the dead. Let it go.

Oh, fuck her.

Her reasoning actually makes sense. This was a story about this specific group of people, based on the lives of the creators.

Sweet. I'll keep this in mind the next time I decide to write a show with white people in it. If I absolutely MUST include them, I'll keep their lines brief and relevant only to the information I know about white culture. All white characters will be relegated to only saying one line:

"I like raisins in cole slaw and kale."

It's only fair.

She’s right and Friends wouldn’t be Friends if they did it any other way.

It was at its worst when they tried to overcompensate by adding a Black cast member for a season.

I recommend "Happy Endings" instead of "Friends." Sure, the cast is colorful and there's even a fat gay, but it's also just a funnier and more layered show.

Happy Endings is underrated, though very Millennial humor at this point.

Not really a big deal. The show is very white and very unfunny. Seinfeld is very white but was and is very funny in it's prime. Seinfeld was able to hire actors who are Black, Asian and Hispanic although the core cast is white. Seinfeld got into trouble with an episode involving the Puerto Rican Day parade but by then the show lost it's stride.

I always found her character annoying…and she was by far the ugliest one.

Shut up, Lisa. Stop demolishing your legacy.

She’s right! It’s the same when people leveraged this shit against Woody Allen. If you right about what you DONT know it’s that much more insulting.

Jesus H Christ.

I wanted to like Happy Endings, but I just can’t with Adam Pally. He is one of the most annoying actors ever. I did enjoy the episode with DL Fave James Wolk where everyone was obsessed with his character.

Brandeis, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a Jewish-affiliated university outside Boston.

it is named after Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice

Hence the cast of "Friends"

[quote]Well, I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college.

No Lisa. NBC wanted their own version of Living Single, so they got one. They can't even admit that.

[quote]They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of color.

So Winifred Hervey, Mort Nathan. Barry Fanaro all then had no business writing for The Golden Girls? It should have only been written by fifty plus year old women in the business.

Talented writers are able to write over a broad spectrum. No one thought two young (straight to boot) men in their twenties would be able to write so perfectly for women in their 60's, but they did brilliantly.

And how many fucking times is she going to keep bringing back The Comeback? No one cares. Must be nice just to piss money down the drain like that.

There's a reason the only black character on South Park is named Token.

[quote]I'll keep their lines brief and relevant only to the information I know about white culture. All white characters will be relegated to only saying one line:

[quote]"I like raisins in cole slaw and kale."

🤣🤣🤣

Thank you! Than you so much!!

[quote] If you right about what you DONT know it’s that much more insulting.

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

[quote]There's a reason [bold]the only black character[/bold] on South Park is named Token.

Uh...

Sorry, I blanked on Chef. And Token's parents. But my point stands that just inserting a POC for the sake of diversity would be insulting.

r21 Oh, I know what you meant.

I just wanted to post that song. I appreciate you presenting the perfect opportunity. :)

not necessary to hire tokens racists do that. Seinfeld is a white show and still managed to hire Black Asian and Hispanic actors, it is not that hard to do this but it's a choice

R16- She’s brought The Comeback once. It’s my favorite show ever. It hit home because I booked a series the same year Val booked Room & Bored.

The Comeback BACK once I mean. First season 2005, Second season 2014. That’s it. And the article says there is no plan to bring it back. But people don’t read articles anymore.

[...]

r18

I think she's correct. It would have been worse to insert a Black or Asian or Hispanic, etc., character and do it badly. It's so obviously checking a box. A year or two ago, one of the Friends bigwigs apologized, wrung his hands, blah blah blah. You can't have it both ways. You created something that people liked and that should have been way more than enough. Now, you want the lack of non-white characters to be OK.

She's right. I keep telling people, 4/6 of the characters were upper-class self-absorbed white/Jewish NYers who lived in a bubble and would stick to their own. In fact it mad little sense for Joey (working class Italian) and Phoebe (quirky New Age bohemian) to be even in their inner circle. Go to NYC and you'll see the upperclass is extremely cliquish.

The most unrealistic thing was these six adults did everything together and having all that free time to hang out like they were teenagers. Joey being a friend of Chandler made sense due to their history but Joey being friends with the others did not.

Seinfeld never felt "white" to me. It just felt like New York City. The humor isn't really the same type of broadly white American humor like Home Improvement, According to Jim, Big Bang Theory have or what post-season 1 Friends became. Seinfeld had very Jewish and by extension East Coast type of humor. It's like how MadTV had this Jewish type of comedy that made it less reaching than WASPy SNL which is beloved nationally.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is similar to Seinfeld in that it's very East Coast too but instead of Jewish humor, it's Irish/Italian Catholic type humor.

r26 Oh, will next call out rad fem theories on gay men?

friends is white and jewish, they still couldn't be fucked to hire other types of actors

[...]

R17 South Park's humor is based on the creators growing up in Colorado. That's why they made fun of the fact barely any black people were in the town and Chef and Token constantly getting microaggressions. That's why they even had episodes parodying Mormonism because there's a lot of Mormons in that area of Colorado they're from. And Kyle being the only Jew in town is based on the co-creator Matt Stone's experience as a Jew himself.

r33 how was it Jewish besides saying a couple of characters were Jewish? From what I gather, it was even lacking on stereotypes. It was very goyish.

Lisa is very smart. She was on Bill Maher's podcast and 75% of her answers were such cool snark even Bill didn't catch on. I sensed she thought he was a nasty old coot but it was too late to get out of it so she shaded him slyly. I think she is an elitist and naturally very snarky.

Nobody should be slagging on Lisa Kudrow.

r34 It wasn't as much of a question as a call out, dear. You should be used to by now. Just deflect with the usual but the patriarchy or str8 men are worse, call it a day and jump back into your conspiracy theories of trannies controlling the world bank via radio waves transmitted by the inorganic parts they possess. TransSkyNet is upon us. Oooh. Aaah.

Watch the show for details, I can no longer watch the program with any interest r36. I still watch old Seinfeld episodes which is a very white and Jewish show and still laugh. Seinfeld did not write about the Black experience but still managed to hire Black and Asian and Hispanic actors every once in a while.

Friends is a fantasy for the whites, it's not interesting or important.

[...]

Seinfeld's humor is understandable to anyone who's from the Northeast. Because even if you're not Jewish, Jews are such a big part of the regional culture that the slang and jokes are used by many. Like schmuck is a common term in NY and NJ. Similar thing how many Protestants in the Northeast get Catholic jokes.

A lot of black humor can be understood by white Southerners for similar reasons. Napoleon Dynamite has a lot of Mormon humor but anyone in Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Idaho where there are Mormons can grasp the subtlety.

Friends was made specifically to appeal to the broadest audience imaginable. It's no confusion as to why it's popular overseas too. Thee humor is extremely simple and after season one, all the NYC and Jewish humor disappeared due to NBC pressure.

Dear God, who fucking cares? It was a funny 90s show. Get over it.

r40 I really can't be bothered to. It just seems a misnomer to call it "Jewish" and the use of it here seems to wade between calling Jews wasps to using Jews as minority shield... either way, it's rather distateful, isn't it? When Jews, old enough to have lived through it's original airing, reflect on tv shows from the period.. "friends" doesn't make the list of "Jewish" shows. So, I wonder what the perspective is to call it a Jewish show? Was Saved by The Bell a black show? hispanic show? native american?

Off on a tangent. Not important enough to debate.

I wouldn't call Friends a Jewish show. Because the original main character Monica was only half Jewish and Courtney Cox is as gentile as could be. Ross is stereotypically Jewish but because of the actor not the writing per se. Their parents are obviously non-practicing and their mother is an Irish Catholic. The only characters that are written as stereotypically Jewish are Rachel Green (stereotypical name, nose job, spoiled attitude, rich doctor father, snobby controlling mother, her bubbe, Jennifer Aniston can pass for Jewish) and Janice (nasally voice, pushy and neurotic attitude, sorta acts and looks like Fran Fine). But Rachel's Jewishness was severely toned down as Jen became America's Sweetheart and especially after she got with Brad Pitt, the whitest Midwestern guy ever.

NBC put pressure on Friends to tone down the Jewishness and even the New Yorky-ness because they knew they could not tone it down on Seinfeld or Mad About You and did not want to be the "New York Jewish" network.

" Friends" reflected the New York of the 90s - segregated and non-apologetic. Then, all of a sudden, everything had to be woke and they are being retroactively canceled.

It did NOT represent the New York of the 90s, or anything real. It was pure show biz product, brilliantly engineered for popularity and great profits.

Okay.

R17 That's Tolkien to you!

[quote] It did NOT represent the New York of the 90s, or anything real.

That's right. That chore was left to MTV and The Real World.

Go to the social media of most 20 somethings today in 2022 and you will see mostly photos of kids of similar races and backgrounds. Of course there are going to be outliers, but just because all of your close friends happen to look like you doesn't mean you're racist.

The only thing shows like Friends and SATC could have done better was to hire a diverse slate of atmosphere (extras) since both shows were set in NYC. However, at the same time - especially back then - depending on where you hung out it wasn't guaranteed you were going to see a whole lot of diversity.

Does it bother any of you that there were no openly gay characters on Friends?

(Joey and Chandler's bromance does not count)

^^Openly gay male -- the lesbian moms checked the lesbian box

Ross's ex-wife had a gay wedding on the show. I remember that some tv stations refused to show that episode.

Chandler was supposed to be gay until Matthew Perry auditioned and the creators liked him so much. They rewrote Chandler to be straight.

In fact the original setup was Monica was the protagonist and Joey was her bad boy love interest. While the other characters would be supporting. The show was supposed to be a starring vehicle for Courteney Cox who was the most well-known. The first season you can see remnants of that premise as Monica basically drives a lot of the season one plots, there's some tension with the streetwise Joey while Ross and Rachel were the B-plot drama. With Chandler being Joey's best friend and a punching bag for jokes and Phoebe just saying weird crap and giving random advice. Halfway through season one, they rebooted it to make it an ensemble show.

The show was a huge success, so obviously the writers got things right for the audience they found. Lisa Kudrow should stay in her lane like Jennifer Aniston figured out a long time ago.

I sometimes catch this on its reruns here in the UK and can't even get through a scene, it is so unfunny and some of the acting is pathetic, especially from Chandler and Ross. Lisa is actually the best actor of the 6.

How in the hell is Living Single the same as Friends? Because they're young people living in a city? This argument gets trotted out often to make up some sort of "racist" critique, but Friends was actually a retool of the Cameron Crowe movie Singles.

I loved how That '70s Show had a lot of self-awareness. The show was set in a small town in Wisconsin in the 1970s where diversity was non-existent. Fez would get a lot of microaggressions or outright hostility from some like Red and Jackie though they softened up on him. When they had some black recurring characters in the last few seasons, the characters would try to be very politically correct around them. Weirdly, the gay characters were treated very well which didn't seem realistic for the time period and setting.

Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox and David Schwimmer are awful actors. Not funny at all. Jennifer Aniston, Matt Leblanc and Lisa Kudrow carried the show.

The show not supposed to represent anyone's reality, its just a basic bitch fantasy. But actors want to work as actors. Actors of every ethnicity want to work, opportunitues to work narrow for Black, Asian and Hispanic performers. When a highly successful show chooses not to hire anyone other than white actors, I think you can see what the problem is. Seinfeld was and is a successful white show that managed to hire other types of actors.

And since Friends was about a group of adults in the city. It was even more jarring they didn't run across that many Asians, Hispanics and Black people in NYC. Seinfeld got that part right. At least sitcoms like Growing Pains, Full House and Step by Step could be excused by being shows about families and most episodes took place in their homes. Though Married with Children had a lot of people of color as recurring characters and background extras

Married W Children had a black writer. People need to work. People of all races need to work.

R65 Yes. Michael E Moye I think. I believe the Bundys were even intended to be black originally as the anti-Huxtables but Fox wasn't going to risk that controversy. Still MwC captured Chicago's diversity very well. Al and Peg had black friends who they invited over. There was the Hispanic reporter. Marcy's boss, a Japanese bank CEO. Everyone was made fun of equally.

I also liked that Saved by the Bell did colorblind casting. They liked Lark Vorhees and Mario Lopez so much they rewrote Lisa Turtle from Jewish to black and AC Slater from white to Chicano to match the actors

You don't have to be colorblind? Hire different people. That is it. Sex in the City? Very, very, very white. Still managed to hire other types of people.

Ally McBeal? Hired other types of performers.

I think Raven Symone mentioned she auditioned to be the best friend for what would be That's So Raven but creators saw she had comedic talent and star power. And redid the whole show to be centered around her. The creators were white just like with Family Matters but both clearly hired black writers because there was a lot of black culture and humor in both. The actors likely had a role too in advising.

Journalists push the diversity angle so hard because they know if they get a juicy (couture) quote they can have a chance of going viral.

There was another interview Kudrow did where she was asked about representation and she mentioned that it had issues with diversity it was progressive around other things, and highlighted the surrogacy storylines. I did make a face when I read that.

Kudrow played aristocrat adjacent Mae Martin's (they them) mother in that awful they/them comedy drama thing they/them made before having her tits removed.

Friends had the lesbian wedding, but not gay and male because that would be too gay. Friends is just a fantasy. Most fantasies are small and uninteresting.

Spin City, also from the 90s, had a black and gay main character though I don't remember him ever having his love life explored. He and Alan Ruck's character had a bromance.

Whatever happened to imagination? Jesus christ this topic is so lame. Anyone should be able to write anything they want.

In the Soviet Union, especially in the early years, all art had to promote socialist ideals.

Were there many non white/Jewish characters in Will and Grace?

There was Rosario of course and Benji, the associate of Mister Beverley Leslie.

[quote] Seinfeld got into trouble with an episode involving the Puerto Rican Day parade

He did? I don't recall that.

[quote] Chandler was supposed to be gay until Matthew Perry auditioned and the creators liked him so much. They rewrote Chandler to be straight.

So Matthew Perry couldn't play a gay character?

We are not talking about art, we are talking about a lucrative franchise that chose to hire only whites. Other equally successful shows, some that aired on the same network as Friends managed to hire other types of people.

For R76

I think NBC just wanted to get middle America viewership so created a sanitized versions of NYC as a fantasy for flyover fraus like Friends and Will & Grace. The teen fraus who watch these shows along with Sex & The City decide to move to NYC to just see it's not what they expected.

R77 He basically was playing a stereotypical closest case (despite dating women), had chemistry with manslut Joey and the butt of homophobic jokes until the writers decided, "OK Chandler is really straight", at some point. And paired him with Monica despite there being no hint of that.

The whole Joey-Chandler bromance thing was played to the hilt-- there was a two-part episode where they had a falling out and were seen mooning for each other in shots that were meant to parody rom-coms. There are numerous Joey-Chandler fan fic stories

I imagine if they rebooted Friends, Chandler would be gay as intended. They rebooted Rugrats and made Betty DeVille a lesbian which was heavily hinted in the original show.

I remember them bitching about other shows such as Ally McBeal, saying how much friendlier their set was.

But, that's not what guest stars including Kathleen Turner had to say. They were a clique.

Plus Ally McBeal was a diverse cast with black, Asian, disabled and elderly cast members

This is so laughably limiting.

"Write what you know" has limits and is not a exhortation to make all works of fiction autobiographical.

Why are people so obsessed with the lack of diversity on shows that are no longer being produced? Today, Sunday Morning talked about the this on The Andy Griffith Show.!

Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on stuff that's being made now because those shows can change?

[quote]Why are people so obsessed with the lack of diversity on shows that are no longer being produced? Today, Sunday Morning talked about the this on The Andy Griffith Show.!

You haven't kept up with the woke attacks on history, historical events and characters and their obsessive need to contextualize everything that happened years ago into their own narrow sensibilities? It's all woke shit and should be ignored, unless you are attending an eastern liberal arts college, where all of this shit began. Then, you must toe the party line.

It's funny to me but shows set in the South like The Andy Griffith Show and Dukes of Hazzard lacking black people bothers me way more than NYC-set shows. The Dukes of Hazzard is set in Georgia, there's no excuse for there only being white people in a rural Georgia area. Georgia is a state where 1/3 people is black. Even in segregation era North Carolina, black people still lived in proximity to whites, so The Andy Griffith Show got that wrong.

[quote]Why are people so obsessed with the lack of diversity on shows that are no longer being produced? Today, Sunday Morning talked about the this on The Andy Griffith Show.! Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on stuff that's being made now because those shows can change?

Because journalists see it as a gotcha question and something that will gain traction with both sides of the culture war.

There are journalists who promote their paid work and get maximum a couple of hundred likes. They tweet that JK Rowling is worse than Hitler and planning a holocaust of LGBTQIA+ people and they get a hundred thousand likes.

R84 = Barbara Thorndyke

The Left continues to spiral into complete insanity.

The reality is that 6 white folks in the 1990s were very unlikely to interact with people of other races.

The fact that Ross dated a Chinese woman was about as "diverse" as that crowd was ever going to get.

It's less believable, even today, that a group of friends would reflect a rainbow coalition of diversity, than be a homogenous racial group.

[quote]Does it bother any of you that there were no openly gay characters on Friends?

No, because I never needed validation from a TV show.

[quote]Spin City, also from the 90s, had a black and gay main character though I don't remember him ever having his love life explored. He and Alan Ruck's character had a bromance.

I recall there was an episode where Lou Diamond Phillips guest starred as a childhood friend of Mike's and he hung out at the city hall office and IIRC, Carter's gaydar went off. Lou's character and Carter went out on a date.

She had a great body

[quote]How in the hell is Living Single the same as Friends? Because they're young people living in a city? This argument gets trotted out often to make up some sort of "racist" critique, but Friends was actually a retool of the Cameron Crowe movie Singles.

It's not a racist critique. Living Single was the number one rated show among urban audiences in the 1993-1994 season. Warren Littlefield was a fan of the show and wanted his own version for NBC. .

It didn't piss off the cast and crew of Living Single that Friends was a hit, it was the way the media and the creators of Friends acted like it was singular phenomenon, when in fact there were not one but TWO friends ensemble shows that debuted a year prior. Give credit where credit is due. Was it also a coincidence that they were considering Nancy McKeon for Monica and Lisa Whelchel for Rachel? Of course not.

Instead of donating 4 million dollars, Marta Kaufman should just come out and say that Friends owes a debt of gratitude to shows like Living Single and Ellen. But Marta in interviews has always struck me as arrogant.

[quote] Sweet. I'll keep this in mind the next time I decide to write a show with white people in it

Will you also keep in mind the fact that the show had a real problem with lack of diversity and should have brought other voices into the writing staff to diversify the writing and thus the cast?

I’m sorry if the facts get in the way of your auto-crucifixion though. Do carry on. 🙄

As she clearly says in her quote, I should have added ^^^

What is the statute of limitations on all this?

I mean Shakespeare did feature a Moor in one of his plays, and a whole bunch of Italians and Danes, but where were the Dutch? The Germans? Why were there no peasants in Macbeth? Not an Asian of any of kind either!!

Fuck diversity. Write the best show you can with characters accessible to the audience.

Funny that white people believe that blacks are just yearning to hang out with them.

Living Single was on Fox which still wasn't a widely distributed network on par with NBC, ABC and CBS yet. Fox took a lot of creative risks and pushed the envelope due to their newcomer status becoming a youth and urban-oriented network. Married with Children 90210 and The Simpsons were some of their hits that kept the network afloat until that NFL deal sealed the deal. I think The X-Files was the first show to crack the Nielsen ratings. Living Single could have had a bigger audience if it was on NBC.

HOW DARE SHE not center transwomen of color in this retroactive handwringing exercise!

[quote] No Lisa. NBC wanted their own version of Living Single, so they got one. They can't even admit that.

Or you can have both and enjoy both regardless of race. I LOVED Living Single and love Queen Latifah, but there is also room for friends. I think instead of trying to force diversity where it doesn't make sense, you can have shows with black casts, white casts, and mixed casts and enjoy it all. Everything that has been remade to include forced diversity (Heathers, Gossip Girl, Queer as Folk, soon A League of Their Own) flow b/c it's not organic to the storyline. I thought friends was basic and boring as hell, but people loved/love it. Why not make shows that cater to the viewership and diversity in programming vs. forced cast diversity?

^^^^flop, not flow...

I think some of you are too young to remember what minority representation in media was like in the 90s.

A gay male character was always the best friend and if he had a love life it was a chaste hug at the end of the evening. And of course, there was no flaming.

For lesbians you were either uber femme or the butchest of the butch. Most shows went with uber femme and used the butch lesbians for comedic effect.

Hispanics, blacks and Asians were the best friends. Asians and Hispanics were indistinguishable from the white characters. Except maybe one special episode that explored some kind of cultural thing. Black characters almost always had flavor, they were the sassy best friend, or the standup citizen adult figure or the magical negro types designed just to help the white characters through their problems.

Cosby did a lot to change black portrayals on sitcoms, but it didn't last. Does anyone remember Homeboys from Outer Space?

As for behind the scenes in writers rooms in the 90s, people got jobs based on who they knew. They were all from Harvard or Yale or some other East Coast university and they hired friends and family.

You can't go back and change any of this stuff. Friends is in the can, which is why I'm never really sure why people keep harping on it.

And you can have diversity that feels organic, like the absolutely genius, "The Comeback". You have the young, hot black, cast mates, the jewy publicist and husband, the very gay caftan wearing hairstylist, the HBO faux-woke lesbian documentarian, the anorexic stepdaughter, the fat, glutinous nemesis. It just felt 100% spot on for the world and it totally worked.

From my child hood there were some fabulous black shows that just worked with the casts and wouldn't feel real is they all had white friends: Cosby, 227, Living Single, Sister Sister. I really think we need to get back to that formula and just make quality shows that are true representations of the world these characters inhabit. I feel like Bridgeton (a show I have not watched) is one of the only major hits as of late that created a completely unreal world that is historically inaccurate that seems to resonate with everyone. They have "Bridgeton Ball" now a few blocks from where I live and every day I see people dressed up in the costumes and it it looks like fun.

Bridesmaids is another good example of organic diversity that feels real to that world.

Missing the point. Deliberately. Seinfeld did not hang out with the blacks. But the show did hire Black, Asian and Hispanic performers.

R5, the show was about the specific life experience that the creators knew. It was experience hat even many white people don't have.

Lisa is right about the apprenticeship. It wouldn't necessarily be to inject a diverse experience or characters into Friends because that isn't what the show was about or reflected what the creators knew. The real value would be giving diverse writers a chance to hone their skills and to be able to put a hit show on their resume. They then could go and create a project that would represent their own life experiences.

[quote]Missing the point. Deliberately. Seinfeld did not hang out with the blacks. But the show did hire Black, Asian and Hispanic performers.

And some shows didn't because they were writing about their own white world. As were others about their own black world.

I don't know about TV or movies, but to say that a fiction writer can't inhabit another character seems ridiculous. If I can only write about gay, white experiences than my work become memoir and not fiction. The whole point of fiction is that it is not real and you write whatever you want.

Dummies. Mouthbreathers. I'm done.

It was one question in a very long and interesting interview, but of course, gotta make people mad on DL.

Oh look, R18 is all giddy and high on her fried chicken and watermelon.

(See how that works, cunt? Now go away if you’re gonna start racial flame wars.)

Why don’t they just say that Ross was black and call it a day? If the trannies are allowed to go back and rewrite history, I don’t see why the writers of Friends shouldn’t be able to do the same.

[quote]Missing the point. Deliberately. Seinfeld did not hang out with the blacks. But the show did hire Black, Asian and Hispanic performers.

And Friends also hired Black, Asian and Hispanic performers in supporting roles, likely more than Seinfeld did, so what are you even talking about? We had this discussion in one of the multitude of earlier threads, where I went through and counted. In the first season at least half to two-thirds of the episodes featured a Black character. The show was very white, yet did hire Black, Asian and Hispanic performers...just like Seinfeld.

Agree with R116. And Seinfield was even less diverse than Friends as its main cast didn't include non-Jewish whites.

Michael Richards who played Kramer isn't Jewish. And Kramer isn't written as Jewish.

I don’t think Elaine was supposed to be Jewish either

April went to Brandeis.

I hate her. She's pushy.

[quote] The Left continues to spiral into complete insanity.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This from the people who are trying to excuse espionage by the leader of their movement.

R118, the character of Kramer is based on Larry David's former real-life neighbor, Kenny Kramer who was Jewish. Like on the show, David lived across the hall from Kenny in an apartment building for several years.

None of these characters were written as religious Jews. However, the humor is certainly heavily influenced by NYC Jewish culture.

Seinfeld was going to originally be even more exclusionary as they weren't going to have a female cast member.

NBC executives ended up demanding that a woman be added to the cast as a condition for greenlighting the show,

NBC made a good call. Elaine added a good foil to the sausage fest and was hilarious. And I like she was a subversion of the sensible female trope, being just as arrogant and crazy as the gang but thinking she's smarter.

She doesn’t ever seem to be able to do anything with her hair.

Jennifer had the hair. Courteney had the face. Lisa had the brains.

Did Friends actually ever write "about" people of color - like an arc about discrimination in the workplace or something like that? I remember a few POC secondary/guest characters but, as it was Friends, the topics weren't heavy.

I think people expect too much of this dumb sitcom that's the TV equivalent of McDonald's Big Mac or a Starbucks frappucinno. It certainly didn't address the gentrification of NYC that it helped promote.

Her hair is just fine.

Thank you R53, I was just going to make that same point. I'm sure it is not true of NYC but most of the country does not hang out in diverse groups. It may be more true today with the young people I don't know I'm old. But Back when those shows were popular and let's face it they were made for white middle America, not NY, and white middle America does not hang out with people of color or at least didn't use to. It would be nice if they did but apparently, people are more comfortable with people who look like them.

[quote]Did Friends actually ever write "about" people of color - like an arc about discrimination in the workplace or something like that? I remember a few POC secondary/guest characters but, as it was Friends, the topics weren't heavy.

After ‘I’m It’ was cancelled in 1993 following a Rodney King joke in a courtroom scene the producers made a decision not to overtly reference racial issues. And it worked!

"I'm It" totally jumped the shark when they brought in the monkey (n. animal) to act as the office paralegal and that was why it was cancelled.

People are just pissed that such a cultural juggernaut could still exist and remain popular without pandering to the black audience.

Ask a general member of the public to recall a scene from Living Single. Now ask to recall a scene from Friends.

This idea that Friends ripped off Living Single’s premise is so embarrassing. It reminds me of when all those people sued Speilberg because they claimed they came up with ET first. Single people in the city is a sitcom trope that has existed since at least Mary Tyler Moore. Your shitty 90’s Fox sitcom has zero cache outside of people who hate whites and have sour grapes.

Jennifer Aniston used to tweak her nipples before her scenes

[quote]People are just pissed that such a cultural juggernaut could still exist and remain popular without pandering to the black audience.

Most people don't care.

Most black people don't care about the casting of a tv show from nearly 30 years ago.

Journalists wanting to get a story about of online discourse care so they can get promoted by permanently outraged people.

They also never directly refenced 9/11, despite being set in downtown Manhattan.

Locked in a hot, gas fumed smelling trunk with live snakes!

R127 Ross' girlfriend (Julie?) in season 1 was Asian, I know this doesn't answer the question why there were no black roles in the show, but they did have POC recurring roles from early on. Ross later had a black girlfriend (played by Aisha Tyler), that was after 2000s near the end of the series.

Are we STILL talking about it? I belong to a minority group and even I am done with celebrities and their woke point of view..

Americans need to stop obsessing with race.

It's a stupid sitcom, it was not real and it never pretended to be, 5 chronically unemployed young people can afford living in that apartment and in Manhattan? Give me a break!

[quote] This thread is so 2018. The whole woke is over and it’s like dragging something up from the dead. Let it go.

If only, R3!

I'm being chased through the threads by some scolding zealot who's determined to cancel me for uttering a certain four-syllable word.

Where was the ugly people representation? This idea that this is New York in the nineties and none of the extras look like bridge trolls is offensive and the show should be pulled from streaming indefinitely.

R41 You sound so angry.

"Friends" from MADTV

lol they nailed Ross, Monica and Chandler, totally!

r143 They have a tendency to believe that anyone that finds them annoying is a TRA. So, it's quite triggering for them. It's like literal violence for them.

Yeah, New York in the days of " Friends" was so integrated. BWAAAAAH.

R140 I bought that Ross and Chandler were able to afford their apartments - Ross had tenure at NYU and Chandler had a respectable position at a tech job. However, Joey was a struggling actor, Phoebe held nothing but odd jobs, Monica was a chef (?), and Rachel worked at coffee shop at the beginning of the series! Rachel of later seasons, when she was working for the big fashion companies, I could buy as having that cavernous apartment!

It also was not a Living Single rip-off, as I mentioned already in this read, Cameron Crowe was asked to turn his film "Singles" (which blows chunks, I preferred Reality Bites) into a series by NBC, and he rejected it, but NBC took the basic premise, moved it to NYC, and tweaked some characters. It maybe took attention away from Living Single, but it wasn't intended to do so. The concept of yuppies living together in the big city has been around since That Girl!

*THREAD. Goddamn it.

Jews aren't fond of the blacks anyway.

R150 Yes. That's why many African American history scholars and Civil Rights Activists were Jews?

[quote] which blows chunks

Another charming American expression.

Yeah R136 we really needed a Friends 9/11 episode.

Apprenticeship is the key. I knew wanna be Black writers, myself included, that needed to be able to apprentice under great writers like the ones on friends. Hollywood is all about who you know, you get opportunity through contacts. There is no incentive to help anyone except those you know because if you keep it "in the family" when you need something you're hoping they can come through for you. Problem is in the years since we've gotten further and further away from having true talent rise up so that people could stay safe in the job market by hiring their friends and family.

[quote] great writers like the ones on friends

I agree. The writing was slick.

I have never seen an episode of " Friends," which, in modern America, eminently qualifies me to criticize it

[quote] I bought that Ross and Chandler were able to afford their apartments - Ross had tenure at NYU and Chandler had a respectable position at a tech job. However, Joey was a struggling actor, Phoebe held nothing but odd jobs, Monica was a chef (?), and Rachel worked at coffee shop at the beginning of the series! Rachel of later seasons, when she was working for the big fashion companies, I could buy as having that cavernous apartment!

At some point on the show there was some storyline about Monica's apartment being rent controlled because of some kind of lease agreement her grandmother had. IIRC, the agreement was supposed to be just for the grandmother and Monica had moved in there while the grandmother was alive and still somehow kept rent controlled after the grandmother died. I can't remember the whole storyline and I probably go details wrong. But, it seemed like that was the writers attempt at trying to explain how they afforded that apartment.

What happened to Aniston's hair in s9? It looks so plain. Was it for a movie?

R158 it's amazing how much her looks are dependent on good hair. She looks like a soccer mom Karen there