Friends’ lack of diversity has been much discussed in recent times, and the issue took centre stage as star David Schwimmer appeared at the TV Baftas on Sunday.
The actor was presenting an award alongside Nick Mohammed, his co-star in upcoming Sky One series Intelligence at the ceremony, when Nick took a moment to address the matter.
“We’re also here to celebrate the huge, huge array of diversity within Bafta,” Nick said. “Not just on display across all the shows nominated tonight, but also in terms of those presenting the awards.”
David, who played Ross Geller in 90s sitcom, replied: “That’s right, look at us. Only 50% of us is white heterosexual male,” to which Mohammed added: “And we all remember how diverse Friends was...”
David continued: “Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was a groundbreaking show in that fully half the cast were women, and I made sure we were all paid equally.”
Mohammed replied: “Wasn’t Courteney Cox making more than the rest of you when you first started?”
“Yes, that was a problem,” David joked.
Friends has been called out for its all-white, all-heterosexual six main characters in recent times, especially as a new generation began watching the show when it arrived on Netflix last year.
Aisha Tyler, who played Ross’ love interest Dr Charlie Wheeler in the ninth series, recently told the Guardian she thought the show was an “unrealistic representation” of New York at the time.
She said: “My character wasn’t written on the page to be a woman of colour, and I auditioned against a lot of other women of different ethnic backgrounds, so I like to think they picked me because I was the right person for the role.
“But I knew it was something new for the show, and it was really important because, the fact of the matter was, it was a show set in Manhattan that was almost entirely Caucasian. It was an unrealistic representation of what the real world looked like.”
