A former Friends star has opened up about the show’s lack of diversity and how this affected her.
Aisha Tyler joined the cast of the hit sitcom in 2003 as the first recurring Black character, taking on the role of Charlie, a paleontology professor who dated Ross (played by David Schwimmer, after initially dating his best friend Joey (played by Matt LeBlanc).
But while some may say this was an incredible achievement for representation at the time, the actor revealed that it came with a whole host of problems.
In a new interview with the Independent, the now 53-year-old stated that people in the street would refer to her as the “Black girl from Friends”.
“It was such a common refrain at the time,” she told the outlet. “It wasn’t like it was just something that people looked back at later and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ No, at the time, people talked quite a bit about the fact that, for a show that was set in the heart of Manhattan, it really lacked diversity.
“But we didn’t have social media back then, so it wasn’t the large-scale conversation that it became later,” she added.
Tyler then went on to talk about the fact that her character’s race was never really determined, though she does remember Schwimmer pushing for more diversity in the casting.
“There was nothing in the writing of my character or in the stage directions that indicated that Charlie was supposed to be a woman of color,” the actress continued. “I know that David has said that he really pushed for that [more diversity] and I think that’s wonderful.”
The star went on to state that her character on the show was represented much better than other Black characters at the time because her race wasn’t the most important thing about her.
“…What I liked was that they just wrote this smart, sexy character and she happened to be Black and they weren’t trying to seismically change what the show was, but they were aware of the fact that it didn’t feel totally representative of the world as it existed then or had existed for many, many, many decades. So I knew that me coming on the show was an aspect of that self-reflection,” she explained.
Beyond that though, she admitted that Friends was yet another show that was reflective of what society wanted: more white stories because they were the ones that sold.
“I mean, that’s just been the attitude in Hollywood for a long time,” she said during her interview. “They’d say people won’t watch a show with these characters, and now we all know that’s not true. But that perspective still persists and there are still people who will say, well, that movie won’t sell overseas if it has a Black lead, and that movie won’t sell in these markets if it has a gay lead.
“Or they say, ‘We have our one Black show. We don’t need another one.’”
Tyler even ran into a similar recurring issue when applying for more roles, with many filmmakers stating that they had already cast their “Black” character to which the actor responded: “I’m like, ‘Have you never seen two Black people in the same room in the real world? Is there just one of us? Are we like Superman and Clark Kent? When I leave the room, does Kerry Washington come in?'”
Tyler slammed the entire perspective as “ridiculous” – which is exactly what it is.
However, the 53-year-old has been thrilled to see diversity and change well and truly take hold of Hollywood as more and more interesting stories are told through a variety of different characters from different marginalized backgrounds.
“We know that great stories are human stories, and they’re varied and diverse and compelling and people want to learn about people and have experiences that they haven’t had before,” she stated.