Friends "remake" with Sterling K. Brown, Uzo Aduba, Ryan Michelle Bathe to stream Tuesday
Aux Features Friends
Let’s be clear: Friends was really an all-white Living Single. But now David Schwimmer is getting his wish and the internet is being gifted a Friends reading with an all-Black cast. The special event, taking place Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET, is part of Zoom Where It Happens, which is described as “a new live table read series presented by Black women artists to raise awareness, intention and activation around voting rights. Hosted by former Friends guest star Gabrielle Union, the reading will be of a “remake” of the season-three bottle episode “The One Where No One’s Ready.” Tuesday’s event features real-life couple Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe as Ross and Rachel, Aisha Hinds as Monica, Jeremy Pope as Chandler, Uzo Aduba as Phoebe, and Kendrick Sampson as Joey.
“We’ve selected popular four-quadrant shows to attract a wide cross-section of potential voters,” Bathe says in a press release of the reading series, which kicked off Sept. 8 with a Golden Girls reading hosted by Lena Waithe and starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Regina King, Alfre Woodard, and Sanaa Lathan. “We’re thrilled to see how many people have embraced the series and are actively motivated to get out the vote this November.”
More than 100,000 people signed up to attend the Golden Girls reading, and the series will continue with a rotating cast of actors through Election Day 2020. Tuesday’s performance will connect viewers to When We All Vote, the nonpartisan voting initiative founded by Michelle Obama. If When We All Vote sounds familiar, that’s maybe because it’s also the organization benefiting from HBO Max’s upcoming West Wing reunion special…which also stars Sterling K. Brown, who just came off being a double Emmy nominee for his work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and This Is Us, and can currently be heard on the most recent season of Kipo And The Age of Wonderbeasts. Just listing all his credits makes us tired.
This reading is not the first time Friends has been reimagined with a Black cast. In 2017, the NBC sitcom was channeled in JAY-Z’s “Moonlight” music video with Issa Rae, Tiffany Haddish, Tessa Thompson, Jerrod Carmichael, LaKeith Stanfield, and Lil Rel Howery.
To register for Tuesday’s event, click this link here.
63 Comments
Why did Friends get more criticism for its lack of diversity than other shows of its time?
It didn’t. It got a proportional amount based on its popularity.
Probably because it’s more popular and well-known than almost every other show of its time. Plus, it didn’t help that it was set in New York, a highly multicultural and multiethnic place, and yet showed very few people of color.I suppose Seinfeld could get the same criticism, but it’s about a bunch of selfish monsters, whereas the Friends were at least ostensibly likable people.
… Also Seinfeld feels like a different animal – debuted in the 80s and had just the 4 of them, and is centred around one person.I dunno, I reckon the criticism is because there was something about the world of Friends – with 6 leads hanging out at a Central park coffee shop, that just felt needlessly yet deliberately segregated all the time, in a sort of dog-whistling way that perhaps may not have been picked up on by many people who look like the cast, but people of colour got the message loud and clear! When Lauren Tom was on as Julie, it’s with the premise of making the audience root for Ross-Rachel.Another 90s show with a similar deliberate-segregation-vibe was Sex and the City. Yes, both shows’ final seasons paid lip service to diversity with *gasp* Aisha Tyler and Blair Underwood respectively getting multi episode arcs – those were both last-minute time-filling pitstops before the impending final wrapup with the endgame pairings of Ross-Rachel and Miranda-Brady …
I generally agree, but I think this is a little ungenerous to the casting of Tom as Julie. She was an obstacle to Ross and Rachel, certainly. But she’s a full and sympathetic character throughout and it’s never suggested she and Ross couldn’t be perfectly happy together (if it weren’t for Rachel). Unlike Paulo or Bonnie, who were never characters, just funny roadblocks, they made sure to give Julie a happy ending. Not to say race was absent from Tom’s casting. Julie was Chinese to set up Rachel’s “Welcome to our country!” joke.
The joke’s on Rachel there though, right?
Well, sort of. Even if the joke ultimately lands on Rachel, it’s a very real thing for Asian Americans to be assumed to be immigrants rather than being born here and the embarrassment of the person being corrected doesn’t really balance the situation.
Still though, if we had to cast an all-black reading of Seinfeld, Eric Andre as Kramer is a slam-dunk
He definitely has the Kavorka down.
I love this. Can we get an original episode where Kramer is on a mission to legalize ranch?
Haha, that’s an amazing idea.
My recollection is that Seinfeld got just as much contemporaneous criticism for being all-white as Friends did when they were both airing. You don’t hear as much about Seinfeld now because… well you just don’t hear as much anything about Seinfeld now as you do Friends, probably because Friends is on Netflix and Seinfeld isn’t.
yeah, it’s always sunny doesn’t have many characters of colorbut the main characters are assholes from Philly so their racism is implied
Now you’ve said that word “implication” a couple of times…
“I suppose Seinfeld could get the same criticism, but it’s about a bunch of selfish monsters…”Also, Seinfeld was at least introspective enough to tweak that racism in several episodes that quickly comes to mind, for example when George tried to deny his racism by finding a black friend, or the Chinese-faking girlfriend.
Yeah. And as others have noted, Seinfeld started around 1990, while Friends started around 1994. For some reason, maybe people are more willing to give a pass to a show that started earlier, whereas by 1994 people should have known better? Or something.
NYC is multicultural but very much not homogeneous. A show taking place in the South Bronx realistically would likewise not have a very diverse cast.
You can see as much or as little multi-culturalism in New York as you want. The idea of white 20-somethings in the Village interacting in a largely white bubble is not far fetched.
I think the point isn’t that it’s not realistic, it’s that it’s not helpful. Like, there’s nothing wrong with a show that focuses on just white people; the problem is when almost every show focuses on just white people. To that end, “Friends is bad because it shows just white people in New York” is nonsense, but “Friends is part of the systemic silencing of people of color” is valid.
Seinfeld certainly did get critiqued along these same lines, quite a lot, but as Carioca LDN says, that show existed in a very consciously artificial New York, while Friends’ artificiality was meant to be aspirational, not fantastic.
Seinfeld avoided the criticism with the black and white cookie.
To be blunt Seinfeld was also 4 “ugly people” inside and out and friends seemed more like perfect people with their perfect imperfect lives walking around the village which I hated to break it to people was a lot of us minorities running around. Fuck, I use to drive my friends from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the Village to hangout in the Summer a ton from 95-2001 and we are black, hispanic, Asian and West Indian.
I think because Friends has been largely criticized as being a “reboot” of the Fox show, Living Single. Both shows were produced by Warner Brothers only a year apart, and centered around the lives of six friends living (roughly) in adjacent apartments. Living Single in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Friends in the West Village. And while Living Single centered around cast members who were largely portrayed as being successful in their careers, the Friends characters were largely seen as privileged, Gen Xers where everything just sort fell into place for them.Don’t think I’m bashing Friends. I enjoy reruns of the show, despite some of their jokes really not aging well. But I think it’s unfair that the criticism always falls on the show, and not the studio/distributor, Warner Brothers, for hedging their racial bets.
When according to Cameron Crowe, it was lifted from his movie Singles. Which makes a lot of sense too
I had sort of heard that, which does make it interesting as Singles was also produced/distributed by Warner Brothers. So maybe this is like all of those western films that were ripping off Kurosawa’s Japanese samurai films. When it’s been said that Kurosawa was actually taking the themes and ideas of Spaghetti Westerns and American Westerns and adapting them to Japanese Samurai films. So copying the copier.
Entertainment Ouroboros.
When AV Club bloggers had an article quota to hit and couldn’t find any new celebs to cancel. Here and io9 have both fallen off a cliff into Let’s Write About Shows from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
They did get criticized when it was airing. Madtv had a brilliant about the show getting hit court mandate desegregation order, but most people (including POC) didn’t care a whole lot about representation on TV as they do these days.Still though, by the end of the show it did get to a point where they felt compeled to bring in Aisha Tyler as a love interest for Ross and Joey in season 9.
No talk about Friends’ relationship with black people is complete without this amazing music video
Excellent. (Also there was the Good Morning, Good Morning! guy.)
Ahem “Morning is here!” guy – pushes up glasses.Seriously though there was also Sherri Shepherd as Rhonda “and these breasts aren’t real”.Jenifer Lewis has the distinction (I think) of being the first black person to have lines in Friends, as Monica’s co-worker at whichever restaurant she worked at in season one.
I stand corrected.Yeah, Lewis is in the first or second episode IIRC. (And I should, I just watched it a couple weeks ago.)
iMDb tells me it’s the third episode, so very early in the show’s run. The annoying thing is we never see her again.Though to be brutally honest, she was far too good to only appear on Friends as “Monica’s work buddy” and I say that as a fan of the show.
Yeah, i too mentally sang/corrected “Morning is here!” when i read “Good Morning Good Morning”.And yes, i remember Sherri shepherd shouting at the co-worker that she shared her pudding with him as a kid! (Small but memorable role).And – a bit of irrelevant trivia – just realised that with Jenifer Lewis as Monica’s coworker and Janet Hubert later guesting as Chandler’s boss, we had 2 out of 3 of the Fresh Prince’s aunties show up on Friends ..
Then there was Charlie (spelling?) in season 9/10 I think.
“I’d shake your hand, but I don’t want you to get my chicken disease.”
“Alright… professor or detective?”
Holy fuck I haven’t laughed this hard at something on the internet in years
I just woke up from a bad dream where I lived in some unfamiliar town where I was having the squeeze put on me by the local mafia – probably a side effect of too much cheese before bed, plus falling asleep listening to the news that London may be going into another coronavirus-induced lockdown …Now I’m reading an article about Sterling K. Brown doing a table read as Ross in that *awful* Friends episode where Ross scolded Rachel in the vein of many-an-abusive boyfriend. Friends getting the same reverent treatment as vintage comedy Golden Girls? Sterling K Brown as Ross at his most dickish? London about to go back into lockdown? HAS THE WORLD GONE MAAAAAD???
:|Go back to sleep, dude.
Howdy AVC twin. I think that bottle episode is regularly brought up as the best Friends episode, not that means anything.Personally I’m a big fan of The One with All the Poker from the first season (that’s what hooked me into the show) and The One with the Embryos (because that quiz is funny).
Hey there – Yeah figures that I’d be in the minority with my feelings about that ep …Oh, by the way, the other day I was talking to you about Black Monday on Sky, and I totally forgot to mention something I know you as my AVC twin would also see as a draw: the show was created by Happy Endings creator David Caspe …Aaaand … It costars none other than Casey ‘Year of Penny’ Hartz!
Amahzing!
Come on. He was going to drink the fat to make up for yelling!!!
Wasn’t there a black character on the show?
Still one of my favorite episodes
I love when you can just “hear” a picture.
“Was that place the sun?”
Didn’t he ask the guy at the tanning salon what number/shade of tan he’s using, and dude replied “I’m Puerto Rican”. Was that the – *gasp* – only Puerto Rican we saw in New York in 10 years of Friends episodes?EDIT:
That was probably the only race joke across the whole ten years of the show. To be fair that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
That was probably the only race joke across the whole ten years of the show.You’re probably right, although I recently rewatched the one with Monica in braids, and this time noticed it wasn’t just ‘Monica looks ridiculous’ as the joke as i remembered, but it was the more general ‘braids-are-a-ridiculous-hairstyle’ repeated punchline, which seemed … race-adjacent. Chandler calls her Allen Iverson, complains “I can see your scalp”, does a pseudo-Jamaican accent when talking to her …
Why doesn’t Sterling K. Brown, the largest friend-
….Hm? Oh, sorry, I ran out of energy to finish the bit.
Incidentally, I’d give the diversity of Single Female Lawyer a C+. OK…not great.
Wearing sexy miniskirts and being self reliant!
this is a deep cut. Whimmy wham wham wazzle!
I prefer that other Friends show that had a Black friend, a Gay Jewish friend, a one-sixteenth Navajo Indian friend …
#marytylermooretylermooremooremoore
I streamed all of Happy Endings within in a week or two a few years back, so it’s a little fuzzy to begin with, but watching this clip made me realize how forgettable the character who was going to marry Elisha Cuthbert’s character was. Is he the dude in the scarf, or is that a guest actor?
I also remember that as being a terrible premise that the show seemed all over the place with in its first few episodes. I think they were friends in episode two and then mad about the wedding being called off in episodes three and four because of weird scheduling which somehow persisted to streaming, yet the show ended up being amazing in spite of the rough start.
Yeah, he’s the dude in the scarf (who is called ‘Ross’ to Elisha Cuthbert’s ‘Rachel’). I can understand him being ‘relatively’ forgettable when you had the likes of Damon Wayans, Eliza Coupe, Casey Wilson and Adam Pally – but in fairness to Zachary Knighton (that’s his name) he was at his best when he was the butt of their jokes.Exhibit A: Shut up Latoya!!
Yeah, he’s the dude in the scarf (who is called ‘Ross’ to Elisha Cuthbert’s ‘Rachel’). I can understand him being ‘relatively’ forgettable when you had the likes of Damon Wayans, Eliza Coupe, Casey Wilson and Adam Pally – but in fairness to Zachary Knighton (that’s his name) he shone best when he was a butt of their jokes.Exhibit A: Shut up Latoya!!
FUCKRIGHTOFFUGH, THIS SHIT IS ALREADY OLD.
I think the only mistake here is Sterling playing ROSS. I get that his wife is absurd and so has to be Rachel, but don’t dim your light Sterling you are at least a Chandler, don’t be so hard on yourself
You know, I hear what you’re saying, and ordinarily I’d agree with you, but … Counterpoint! Have you looked at those other two? That’s a two-way tie for Joey right there …
You guys know Ian Jones-Quartey from Steven Universe and OK KO? He had this web series Nockforce that basically functioned as his demo reel and he animated a great short video discussing the lack of diversity on Friends. The theory they came up with was that Friends took place in Soho, which explains why there was only white people.
My theory was that six lame white people like that wouldn’t have POC friends in the first place. I mean, every one of them would call the cops on you if you brought weed to the party. Including Phoebe. Heck, especially Phoebe.