Does the Friends series lack diversity?

"I wish I knew what I know today. I would have made very different decisions" This is what Marta Kauffman, creator of the cult series Friends, revealed during a virtual discussion organized this weekend by the ATX Festival Television. His words quoted by Entertainment Weekly echo a question we asked her during this exchange: What would she have liked to know at the start of her career? The creator of the television program of the 90s did not mince her words. She spoke of her desire at the time to highlight diversity but how it was not enough. Marta Kauffman says she regrets the lack of diversity within Friends : "We have always encouraged people of diversity in our business, but I have not done enough. (…) Today, I think about what I can do. What can I do differently? How can I do a show in a new way? "

Lack of diversity in Friends has often been mentioned in recent months. The actor who plays Ross Geller, for example, David Schwimmer, had notably highlighted, during an interview, how he had fought at the time so that the female characters with whom Ross dated was not necessarily white . He decried the lack of diversity and the mostly white cast of the series. Thus, her character goes out with Charlie at the end of the series, a black woman, after having been in couple with a woman of Asian origin in the first seasons of Friends. He even declared: "Maybe there should have been a Friends with black or Asian people"

Today, it would seem that a real awareness is being made around the lack of diversity within the television programs and which go in the direction of the anti-racist fight. A full cast meeting is planned soon but no date has yet been announced because of the health crisis that has impacted the organization of the shoots.

Friends, the meeting: when?

Video by Juliette Le Peillet