Newz9
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Marta Kauffman says she now will get why individuals have been important of “Friends.”
The co-creator of the hit comedy sequence told the Los Angeles Times she had initially thought individuals had been unfairly concentrating on the sitcom about its lack of diversity, however defined she’s “learned a lot in the last 20 years.”
“Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy,” Kaufman mentioned. “It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
“Friends,” which ran from 1994 – 2004, starred Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer. It had been criticized for a lack of longstanding characters of shade.
In 2020, Schwimmer told The Guardian he was “very aware of my privilege as a heterosexual white male” and mentioned “Friends” occurred throughout a “pre-woke” time, when story was not as inclusive.
“Maybe there should be an all-Black ‘Friends’ or an all-Asian ‘Friends,’” mentioned Schwimmer, who performed Ross for 10 seasons. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color. One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian-American woman, and later I dated African-American women. That was a very conscious push on my part.”
That didn’t go over effectively with some who identified that the all-Black solid comedy “Living Single” aired from 1993 to 1998 (predating “Friends” by a 12 months”) and, like “Friends,” targeted on six younger adults and their intertwined lives in New York City.
Kauffman, who created “Friends” with David Crane, informed the LA Times that she got here to higher perceive systemic racism within the US after the George Floyd homicide and consequently the complaints in regards to the present.
That helped encourage her to pledge $four million to her alma mater, Brandeis University in Boston, for the institution of an endowed professorship within the college’s African and African American research division.
Since the endowment was introduced, Kauffman mentioned she’s “gotten nothing but love.”
“It’s been amazing. It surprised me to some extent, because I didn’t expect the news to go this wide,” she mentioned. “I’ve gotten a flood of emails and texts and posts that have been nothing but supportive. I’ve gotten a lot of ‘It’s about time.’ Not in a mean way. It’s just people acknowledging it was long overdue.”