David Schwimmer Responds To Backlash Following Comments About Diversity On ‘Friends’

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Published

February 4, 2020

Friends star David Schwimmer has apologised for his controversial comments about the diversity problem on the ’90s sitcom.

[jwplayer Fv0MJyTx]

A few weeks back, he told The Guardian that the show was groundbreaking in many ways and therefore he didn’t care about criticism that the show didn’t age well.

“Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends,” the actor told the magazine. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of [colour]. 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.”

Ross and Julie

Ross and Charlie

Actress Erika Alexander tweeted the article with a scathing message to the actor.

“Hey @DavidSchwimmer – r u seriously telling me you’ve never heard of Living Single? We invented the template! Yr welcome bro. ;),” she wrote before adding, “David Schwimmer 2 The Guardian: ‘Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends.’”

Hey ⁦@DavidSchwimmer ⁦@FriendsTV⁩ – r u seriously telling me you’ve never heard of #LivingSingle? We invented the template! Yr welcome bro. 😉 David Schwimmer 2 The Guardian: “Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends” https://t.co/r8W1ZHBwoy

— Erika Alexander (@EAlexTheGreat) January 28, 2020

Living Single, a sitcom that aired from 1992 to 1998, followed the lives of six African American friends living in Brooklyn. Friends aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004.

Schwimmer apologised in a lengthy response to the actress.

“As you know, I was asked recently in an interview for The Guardian how I felt (for the thousandth time) about a reboot of Friends immediately following a conversation about diversity on the show, and so offered up other possibilities for a reimagining of the show today. I didn’t mean to imply Living Single hadn’t existed or indeed hadn’t come before Friends, which I knew it had,” he shared, adding that sometimes quotes are “pieced together” and later “repurposed” by others.