*Aisha Tyler reflected on her experience as the first Black recurring cast member of the ’90s comedy series “Friends,” as the show marks its 30th anniversary.
Tyler joined the cast in 2003 during the ninth season, portraying Charlie, the love interest of Ross (David Schwimmer) after initially being involved with his best friend Joey (Matt LeBlanc). In an interview with The Independent, Tyler recalled being in public and passersby would call her “Black girl from Friends!”
“It was such a common refrain at the time,” she said. “It wasn’t like it was just something that people looked back at later and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ No, at the time, people talked quite a bit about the fact that, for a show that was set in the heart of Manhattan, it really lacked diversity. But we didn’t have social media back then, so it wasn’t the large-scale conversation that it became later.”
She continued: “There was nothing in the writing of my character or in the stage directions that indicated that Charlie was supposed to be a woman of color.”
Tyler added, “I know that David has said that he really pushed for that [more diversity] and I think that’s wonderful.”
Tyler appreciates that Charlie was written as a “smart, sexy character and she happened to be Black,” she said, adding, “… they weren’t trying to seismically change what the show was, but they were aware of the fact that it didn’t feel totally representative of the world as it existed then or had existed for many, many, many decades. So I knew that me coming on the show was an aspect of that self-reflection,” the comedian explained.
Tyler said “Friends” reflected the attitude of the TV and film industry at the time, that “only white stories sold.”
“I mean, that’s just been the attitude in Hollywood for a long time,” she said.
“They’d say people won’t watch a show with these characters, and now we all know that’s not true. But that perspective still persists and there are still people who will say, well, that movie won’t sell overseas if it has a Black lead, and that movie won’t sell in these markets if it has a gay lead,” she added.
“Or they say, ‘We have our one Black show. We don’t need another one.’”
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