Jennifer Aniston admits 'Friends' might offend today's kids

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Just take it as a product of its time, I doubt there was any ill intent behind the disagreeable stuff.

Why would she be very popular, or are you joking?

I saw this on Facebook. I love Friends Too bad it only on HBO Max, I don’t have cable.

I agree, it was playful fun.

erm, do I need to spell it out?

Yes please.

Is it because she's pretty?

I hope you aren't saying she's stupid, or she could be exploited because she's blonde.
She's the smartest of all six characters - book smarts and street smarts.
She's a trauma survivor and she'd kick arse if anyone tried to manipulate her.

As a young single man back in the 1990s to me Pheobe was hot (I think most males would agree with me). My emerging brain did not factor that Pheobe's character might have had trauma (and until you mentioned this now I didn't even know?)

Her character (to me as a 20 something) was pretty, quirky, cheerful and generous. She would make a fantastic masseuse (I wasn't being sexual) in that her character would have easily made me feel relaxed and rejuvenated.

Yes Phoebe has CPTSD.
I forget the whole story but her mother committed suicide when they were young
Father abandoned her
Stepdad sold his blood to buy her food
Stepdad went to prison
She lived on the street from age 14 in a car
She didn't finish high school
She got hepatitis from a pimp spitting in her mouth
Then didn't she find out she had a different mother?
Also her birth age was wrong all her life - lost ID
Gave birth to her brother's triplets and had to give them up

The actor who played Chandler Bing's iconic "rebound roommate" Eddie in T has addressed the show's lack of diversity.

Adam Goldberg played Eddie, who momentarily replaced Joey in his and Chandler's apartment after the two men had a falling out. While Goldberg's character appeared in only three episodes of the sitcom, he has gone down as one of the show's most memorable roles.

In an interview with the Independent published on Sunday, Goldberg discussed his time on the show and commented on its lack of diversity.

"In terms of diversity, looking back, it seems insane. I've heard Black people speak about this and it's like, you never expected to see yourself, so when you didn't, it was not a surprise, and you ended up identifying to characters, irrespective of their race," he told the publication.

Goldberg continued: "It was just the norm that there was such a lack of diversity. I mean, I spent a lot of my career complaining about how Italians can play Jews. You see De Niro play Jews but you very rarely see someone who's a known Jewish actor playing Italian.

"So that's where my head was at. Or I would get feedback about not being all-American enough, which, you know, if you were to say that to somebody now you'd probably be fired. Or maybe not, because all-American has become such a derisive term."

Newsweek contacted spokespeople for Goldberg and show creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, for comment via email outside normal working hour.

Goldberg said that while Friends was on air, television was "just an amplification" of what was happening in the culture at the time.

This isn't the first time a Friends actor has addressed the topic of diversity, as two of the main cast members previously shared their thoughts on the issue.

In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Schwimmer said he'd made a "conscious push" to have his character date more women of color.

"I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color," he said.

"One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian American woman, and later I dated African American women. That was a very conscious push on my part."

Kudrow has also addressed the show's lack of diversity, saying the story was based on the writers' personal experiences.

"I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college. And for shows especially, when it's going to be a comedy that's character-driven, you write what you know," she told the Daily Beast in 2022.

"They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of color," she continued.

Kudrow added that any future Friends projects "would need to be more current—and more diverse representation is not a bad idea, you know?"

During a panel at the ATX TV Festival in 2020, Kauffman said she "didn't do enough" to promote racial diversity in the show.

In 2022, she told the Los Angeles Times that she had changed her view about the criticism over the lack of diversity—which she originally found "difficult and frustrating"—in the years after George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.

The actor who played Chandler Bing's iconic "rebound roommate" Eddie in Friends has addressed the show's lack of diversity.

Adam Goldberg played Eddie, who momentarily replaced Joey in his and Chandler's apartment after the two men had a falling out. While Goldberg's character appeared in only three episodes of the sitcom, he has gone down as one of the show's most memorable roles.

In an interview with the Independent published on Sunday, Goldberg discussed his time on the show and commented on its lack of diversity.

"In terms of diversity, looking back, it seems insane. I've heard Black people speak about this and it's like, you never expected to see yourself, so when you didn't, it was not a surprise, and you ended up identifying to characters, irrespective of their race," he told the publication.

Goldberg continued: "It was just the norm that there was such a lack of diversity. I mean, I spent a lot of my career complaining about how Italians can play Jews. You see De Niro play Jews but you very rarely see someone who's a known Jewish actor playing Italian.

"So that's where my head was at. Or I would get feedback about not being all-American enough, which, you know, if you were to say that to somebody now you'd probably be fired. Or maybe not, because all-American has become such a derisive term."

Newsweek contacted spokespeople for Goldberg and show creators, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, for comment via email outside normal working hour.

Goldberg said that while Friends was on air, television was "just an amplification" of what was happening in the culture at the time.

This isn't the first time a Friends actor has addressed the topic of diversity, as two of the main cast members previously shared their thoughts on the issue.

In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Schwimmer said he'd made a "conscious push" to have his character date more women of color.

"I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color," he said.

"One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian American woman, and later I dated African American women. That was a very conscious push on my part."

Kudrow has also addressed the show's lack of diversity, saying the story was based on the writers' personal experiences.

"I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college. And for shows especially, when it's going to be a comedy that's character-driven, you write what you know," she told the Daily Beast in 2022.

"They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of color," she continued.

Kudrow added that any future Friends projects "would need to be more current—and more diverse representation is not a bad idea, you know?"

During a panel at the ATX TV Festival in 2020, Kauffman said she "didn't do enough" to promote racial diversity in the show.

In 2022, she told the Los Angeles Times that she had changed her view about the criticism over the lack of diversity—which she originally found "difficult and frustrating"—in the years after George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.