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One of the stars of “Friends” is sharing her thoughts on the show’s lack of diversity.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Lisa Kudrow explained why she feels it was probably for the better that series creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane didn’t include characters of colour.
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“Well, I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college. And for shows especially, when it’s going to be a comedy that’s character-driven, you write what you know. They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of colour,” she said.
Kudrow added of the lack of opportunities for actors of colour, “I think at that time, the big problem that I was seeing was, ‘Where’s the apprenticeship?’”
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The actress had previously addressed the longstanding criticism of “Friends”, telling the Times in 2020, “It would not be an all-white cast, for sure. But, to me, [‘Friends’] should be looked at as a time capsule, not for what they did wrong.”
Kauffman has also recently been candid about failing to include more diversity in the series, leading her to donate $4 million to Brandeis University for the school’s African and African-American Studies department.