Marta Kauffman, the co-creator of Friends, has said she is "embarrassed" when she looks back at the iconic sitcom's lack of diversity over its 10-year run from 1994 to 2004.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Emmy winner said she had moved from being upset over criticism of the series in the past to feeling that it is justified.
The Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton writes: "The series' failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society, which she came to see more clearly in the aftermath of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the worldwide protest movement that erupted around it."
"I've learned a lot in the last 20 years," said Marta Kauffman. "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."https://t.co/kQh3NxQhFA
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 29, 2022
Kauffman has since pledged $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University in Massachusetts, to set up a professorship in the university's Department of African and African American Studies.
"I've learned a lot in the last 20 years," reflected Kauffman, who was also an executive producer on Friends alongside the show's other co-creator, David Crane.
"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."
Kauffman told Braxton that last year's Friends: The Reunion special did not seem like the forum to address the issue.
"I don't know how the two were related," she explained.
"And I also don't know how we could have addressed it in that context of that reunion, going into all the things we did wrong. And there were others."
Kauffman said she wanted to do something with more impact and is "finally, literally putting my money where my mouth is" through the professorship.
"I feel I was finally able to make some difference in the conversation," Kauffman concluded.
"I have to say, after agreeing to this and when I stopped sweating, it didn't unburden me, but it lifted me up.
"But until in my next production I can do it right, it isn't over. I want to make sure from now on in every production I do that I am conscious in hiring people of color and actively pursue young writers of color.
"I want to know I will act differently from now on. And then I will feel unburdened."
