“It’s not easy to admit and admit guilt,” Kaufman said. “Looking at myself in the mirror is painful. I’m ashamed 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 was criticized for its lack of long-lasting characters of color.
“Maybe there should be an all-black ‘Friends’ or an all-Asian ‘Friends,'” said Schwimmer, who played Ross for 10 seasons. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years for Ross to date women of color. One of my first girlfriends on the show was an Asian-American woman, and I later joined African-American women. Dated American women. That was a very conscious push on my part.”
This did not go down well with some, who pointed out that the all-black cast comedy “Living Single” aired from 1993 to 1998 (before “Friends” by a year) and, like “Friends”, focused on six young adults. Was. And their intertwined life is in New York City.
Kaufman, who made “Friends” with David Crane, told the L.A. Times that he had a better understanding of systemic racism in America after complaints about the killing of George Floyd and the resulting show.
This helped inspire him to give $4 million to his alma mater, Brandeis University in Boston, to establish a thriving professorship in the school’s Department of African and African American Studies.
Since the endowment was announced, Kaufman has said that she has received “nothing but love.”
“It’s been amazing. It surprised me somewhat, because I didn’t expect the news to be so widespread,” she said. “I’ve got a flood of emails and texts and posts that are nothing but helpful. I’ve got a lot of ‘It’s about time.’ Not in a mean way. It’s just people accepting that it was long overdue.”