The lack of diversity on “Friends” still doesn’t sit well with one of the actors from the show.
Adam Goldberg, who played Chandler’s roommate, Eddie, in three episodes in 1996, called out the sitcom for barely casting any people of color.
“In terms of diversity, looking back, it seems insane,” the 53-year-old said in an interview with The Independent published Sunday.
“I’ve heard Black people speak about this and it’s like, you never expected to see yourself, so when you didn’t, it was not a surprise, and you ended up identifying to characters, irrespective of their race,” he added.
Goldberg explained that it was “the norm” that shows like “Friends” — which aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004 — would have “such a lack of diversity” at that time.
“I mean, I spent a lot of my career complaining about how Italians can play Jews,” he said. “You see [Robert] De Niro play Jews but you very rarely see someone who’s a known Jewish actor playing Italian.”
“So that’s where my head was at. Or I would get feedback about not being all-American enough, which, you know, if you were to say that to somebody now you’d probably be fired. Or maybe not, because all-American has become such a derisive term.”
Goldberg added, “The entire culture was like that, and television was just an amplification of that culture.”
The “Saving Private Ryan” star also questioned “how the hell” the main characters in the sitcom — played by Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and the late Matthew Perry — were able to afford living in NYC.
“Their apartment is massive, and it’s an incredibly unrealistic portrayal of New York,” he said. “I’m not even 100 per cent sure I knew it took place in that city.”
Despite his critiques, Goldberg said he’s still “happy” to have appeared on the Emmy Award-winning series.
“I think about all those guys, and how incredible someone like Jennifer Aniston is, who’s managed to have this really pretty expansive career,” Goldberg noted. “And it’s really remarkable, because I think it must be very, very, very hard to have been part of something that was so insanely popular and not solely be identified by it.”
In 2022, Mart Kauffman, who created “Friends” with David Crane, told the Los Angeles Times that she felt so “embarrassed” and so much “guilt” over the hit show’s lack of diversity.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Kauffman donated $4 million to her alma mater — the aforementioned Brandeis University — to create the Marta F. Kauffman ’78 Professorship in African and African American Studies.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” the TV writer told the LA Times. “Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
Kudrow, 61, told the Daily Beast in 2022 that Kauffman and Crane, 67, had “no business” telling stories about people of color on the show.
“I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college,” Kudrow said.
“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 color,” she added.
