Friends’ David Schwimmer Apologizes for Diversity Comments: ‘I Didn’t Mean to Imply Living Single Hadn’t Existed’
David Schwimmer is responding to a Living Single actress who called him out on social media for comments in a recent interview.In late January, Schwimmer spoke about Friends‘ legacy with The Guardian.
During the conversation, the actor addressed the show’s ongoing popularity and its recent criticisms regarding its lack of racial diversity.“I don’t care,” he said of the modern-day reflection on the series, which ran from 1994 to 2004.
“That show was groundbreaking in its time for the way in which it handled so casually sex, protected sex, gay marriage and relationships… You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time.
I’m the first person to say that maybe something was inappropriate or insensitive, but I feel like my barometer was pretty good at that time.
I was already really attuned to social issues and issues of equality.”Schwimmer added that he “campaigned for years” to have Ross date women of color and noted that “Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends.”Soon after the interview published, Erika Alexander, who played Max on Fox’s Living Single, argued via Twitter that her series essentially had been an all-black Friends — and it debuted a year before the NBC comedy.
