![]() ![]() ![]() I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago,” Kauffman said in a Zoom interview. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. “I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. In the last few years, Kauffman feels that the criticism towards the show was adequate. The 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that followed was a major catalyst. It was difficult and frustrating.” But things changed. She argued that there was too much attention on the “near-absence of Black people and other people of colour. ![]() The audience often slammed the show for the lack of diversity in its cast but Kauffman never saw it as a problem until now.Įarlier, the creator used to feel that the show was unfairly being singled out. She and David Crane created a show about a group of friends living their lives together and never understood the backlash that it received. And then I will feel unburdened.“Why were so many people picking on Friends?” was a thought that disturbed Marta Kauffman for the longest time. I want to know I will act differently from now on. “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 color. But until in my next production I can do it right, it isn’t over,” she said. “I have to say, after agreeing to this and when I stopped sweating, it didn’t unburden me, but it lifted me up. ”ĭespite “putting money where mouth is,” Kauffman insisted on also putting her much-belated Racism Realization to good use by creating more diverse television shows moving forward. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago. “Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. “I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” Kauffman added. “That was really the moment that I began to examine the ways I had participated. “It was after what happened to George Floyd that I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of,” Kauffman told the Los Angeles Times. Kauffman spent years rebuffing accusations of whitewashing, but said the murder of George Floyd inspired her to look inward. Lauren Tom, Gabrielle Union, Mark Consuelos, and Craig Robinson all appeared in the sitcom in small roles, while Aisha Tyler, who played Charlie, the paleontology professor who dated both Joey and Ross, scored the juiciest part for a non-white actor with a whopping nine episodes. Kauffman ’78 Professorship in African and African American Studies will help the department recruit more students and teachers, as well as support one distinguished scholar in the program.įriends has long been criticized for featuring almost zero people of color in the show, which is set in New York, of all places. In an attempt to “course-correct,” Kauffman has donated $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department.īrandeis’ African and African American studies department was established in 1969 and is one of the oldest such departments in the country. It took her a while, but Friendsco-creator Marta Kauffman is finally ready to face the criticism about her sitcom’s lack of diversity. ![]()
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