Marta Kauffman wishes she did more to encourage diversity in ‘Friends’.
The co-creator of the iconic 90s television series admits she "wishes she knew then what she knows today", amidst the current Black Lives Matter movement.
During an ATX TV … from the Couch panel, she said: "I wish I knew then what I know today. We’ve always encouraged people of diversity in our company, but I didn’t do enough. Now all I can think about is what can I do? What can I do differently? How can I run my show in a new way? That’s something I wish I knew when I started showrunning."
‘Friends’ – which stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer – has been criticised in the past but cast member David has spoken out about it, insisting it was progressive at the time.
He said: "The truth is also that show was groundbreaking in its time for the way in which it handled so casually sex, protected sex, gay marriage and relationships. The pilot of the show was my character’s wife left him for a woman and there was a gay wedding, of my ex and her wife, that I attended. I feel that a lot of the problem today in so many areas is that so little is taken in context. You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time. I’m the first person to say that maybe something was inappropriate or insensitive, but I feel like my barometer was pretty good at that time. I was already really attuned to social issues and issues of equality."
Whilst Lisa insisted the show would be a lot different if it was filmed in 2020.
She said: "Well, it would not be an all-white cast, for sure. I’m 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 the time, progressive."