‘Friends’ writer would “bring more diversity” to show if making it today

A writer from Friends has said that he would “bring more diversity” to the show if they were making it today.

Speaking to The Guardian as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the show’s first airing, writer Andrew Reich who worked on the show from season three onwards said the show’s lack of diversity is the one thing he’d change.

The series, which ended in 2004, has been criticised in recent years for its lack of diversity among its main cast members, as well as for transphobic, sexist and racist jokes.

Previously, Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman expressed regret that she “didn’t do enough” to promote diversity on the sitcom, while Friends star David Schwimmer also spoke out about the lack of diversity in Friends calling it “wrong”. 

Writer Reich, who was also involved with casting, reflected on the show’s history and said that if he was going to do anything differently now, it would be “to bring more diversity”.

Meanwhile, Aisha Tyler has also been reflecting on the lack of diversity in the casting of Friends.

Tyler appeared in the ninth and tenth seasons of the hit sitcom as Charlie Wheeler, a palaeontologist who is romantically involved with both Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Ross (David Schwimmer).

In an interview with The Independent, Tyler said she used to hear passers by shout “Black girl from Friends” at her often.

“It was such a common refrain at the time,” she said. “It wasn’t like it was just something that people looked back at later and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ No, at the time, people talked quite a bit about the fact that, for a show that was set in the heart of Manhattan, it really lacked diversity. But we didn’t have social media back then, so it wasn’t the large-scale conversation that it became later.”

She continued: “There was nothing in the writing of my character or in the stage directions that indicated that Charlie was supposed to be a woman of colour. I know that David has said that he really pushed for that [more diversity] and I think that’s wonderful.

“But what I liked was that they just wrote this smart, sexy character and she happened to be Black and they weren’t trying to seismically change what the show was, but they were aware of the fact that it didn’t feel totally representative of the world as it existed then or had existed for many, many, many decades. So I knew that me coming on the show was an aspect of that self-reflection.”

Tyler added that she saw Friends’ lack of diversity as symptomatic of the wider TV and film industry that believed “only white stories sold”.

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