After 17 years since the last episode, the eagerly anticipated Friends reunion is finally gracing our screens. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt Le Blanc have made fans’ dreams come true by coming together in an unscripted HBO Max special to reminisce about the cultural phenomenon that was Friends.
There were rumours that the cast were not the only famous faces we’d see during the special and then we saw 18 celebrity guests go down memory lane too. The mix of names is somewhat surprising, who knew Lady Gaga, and David Beckham were fans? And weren’t the members of South Korean pop band BTS all in nappies when the show first aired? While the most bizarre guest of all, Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai wasn’t even born when the show first few seasons aired. Nevertheless, what is even more strange, and disappointing to see is that despite plenty of criticism over the years that the show had a diversity problem, there are only three non-white guest stars (Mindy Kaling, BTS and Yousafzai) and not one Black celebrity or former cast member present in the line-up.
Performative Allyship
This comes despite the fact that last year amidst the uprising of the BLM movement after the murder of George Floyd, co-creator Marta Kauffman admitted that the show’s predominantly white version of New York City was a mistake, and she regrets not doing more to showcase diverse talent. “I wish I knew then what I knew today, I would have made very different decisions,” she said during an interview at the virtual ATX Television Festival. “I didn’t do enough. Now all I can think about is what can I do, what can I do differently. How can I run my show in a new way? That’s something I wish I knew when I started show running.” Words that now sound very much like performative allyship and a slap in the face to Black fans.
“For some Black and brown people, not seeing themselves reflected on screen in high-profile pop culture contexts may negatively impact them,” shares digital media studies lecturer at Cardiff University, Dr. Francesca Sobande. This lack of representation tells BAME people that these shows are not made for them, that they are not valued and tells white audiences that their stories are the only ones that matter. This could have made finding Black celebrity guests tricky. Why would they want to comment on a show that ignored their existence for multiple seasons only featuring six Black actors in a total of 16 episodes out of 236.
But those actors would have been a good place to start. Were Aisha Tyler, Gabrielle Union, Sherri Shepherd, Phill Lewis, Ron Glass and Monique Edwards – who all starred in the show – asked to be involved? Did they decline due to other projects or was the pay offered an insulting reflection of the huge wage gap between Black and white entertainers? Or maybe they just didn’t want to get involved. We shall never know.
However, despite being set in New York, one of the most diverse cites in the world and yet not giving BAME representation much thought, just like many popular US sitcoms of that time – Sex and The City, Will & Grace, and Seinfeld also failed to do – it’s more than likely that there are still many Black celebrity Friends fans who could have been asked and mostly likely weren’t.
“This selection of celebrities appearing on the reunion is reflective of how whiteness dominates much of celebrity and popular culture and goes to show that there is still a major need for the industry to more substantially support the brilliant work of Black creators, producers, writers, and artists. Such support should include, but not be limited to, dismantling hiring practices and organisational cultures that have involved the exclusion of Black people for years,” believes Sobande.
In 2021 for the creators of Friends to shoot a reunion that doesn’t include one Black voice and for HBO to air it, there’s no doubt that this will surely feel like a slap in the face for Black people around the world. The powers that be should know better and do better, but sadly it seems as though they are all very much still part of the entertainment industry’s diversity problem.