WENN/Warner Bros. Television/InstarThe Ross Geller depictor’s interview sparks conversations on social media and it doesn’t take long before ‘Living Single’ alum Erika Alexander weighs in on the matter in one of her tweets.
- Jan 29, 2020
AceShowbiz – David Schwimmer faces heat over his recent comments about proposing an all-black version of his popular sitcom “Friends”. In a new interview with The Guardian, the actor, who portrayed Ross Geller on the show, shared that he wished for diversity by creating an all-black or all-asian version of “Friends”, but he was met with criticism because he missed one thing.
“I feel that a lot of the problem today in so many areas is that so little is taken in context. You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time,” the 53-year-old actor explained. “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.”
“Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends,” he said during the interview when asked about the criticism about the show’s all-white cast. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color. 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.”
David might have meant well with the suggestion, but his remarks only caused people to roast him because he forgot the existence of “Living Single”. The show, which many dubbed as the “all-black ‘Friends’ “, aired in 1993, a year before the NBC sitcom premiered.
His interview sparked conversations on Twitter and “Living Single” alum Erika Alexander weighed in on the matter. She wrote on Twitter, “Hey @DavidSchwimmer @FriendsTV – r u seriously telling me you’ve never heard of #LivingSingle? We invented the template! Yr welcome bro. 😉 David Schwimmer 2 The Guardian: ‘Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends’.”
During her appearance on “The Breakfast Club”, she previously revealed that the name for “Friends” was taken from the development stage of the show. “It was. The original name for ‘Living Single’ was ‘My Girls; but it didn’t test well so they came up with some other names. ‘Living Single’ and ‘Friends’ were some of the names presented. Obviously, they chose one and the other went to another show, also produced by Warner Bros.”
Fans also quickly chimed in as one said, “David Schwimmer clearly doesn’t know that the ‘all-black’ reboot of Friends that he wants was already done and was called Living Single…which btw inspired Friends.” Another one added, “Apparently, David Schwimmer has no idea he was on a white reboot of ‘Living Single’.”
Source: Television - aceshowbiz.com
