6/21/2023 0 Comments Friends copied living singleBut Cosby eventually yielded its place on CBS’s primetime schedule to the starkly white family sitcom worlds of Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens. By and large, the sitcoms of the day reflected this siloed worldview at home and in the workplace.Ĭosby’s vision of two romantics striving to savor the autumn of their lives was the exceptional New York sitcom about Black people that found a home with white audiences (Cosby’s then pristine reputation and the show being based on the BBC’s One Foot in the Grave helped). He also said he “was a fan of Living Single, and was not implying Friends was the first of its kind.Television in the late 90s assumed its audience was either Black or white. “Please remember in an interview quotes are often pieced together and taken out of context, and then these quotes are repurposed in other articles by other people who are trying to be provocative.” “I didn’t mean to imply Living Single hadn’t existed or indeed hadn’t come before Friends, which I knew it had,” Schwimmer tweeted in a statement. Wednesday Schwimmer tweeted a response some of the criticism. “Apparently, Schwimmer has no idea he was on a white reboot of ‘Living Single,’ ” writer Michael Harriot tweeted. Living single: /6GKsgqEqJU- Big Girl Slay □ January 28, 2020ĭavid Schwimmer getting dragged on here for not recognizing Living Single, despite the fact that he’s using his position of privilege to push for diversity and inclusion in television is peak Twitter outrage. “It was one of those things where it was a guy called Warren Littlefield that used to run NBC, and they asked him when all the new shows came out, they said, ‘If there’s any show you could have, which one would it be?’ And he said, ‘Living Single.’ And then he created ‘Friends,’ ” she said.Īpparently, David Schwimmer has no idea he was on a white reboot of “Living Single” - Michael Harriot January 28, 2020ĭavid Schwimmer: there should be like a all-black or all-Asian reboot of Friends. People were also quick to grab hold of Queen Latifah connecting the two sitcoms in a 2017 appearance on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.” She tweeted a link to an article about her discussing the differences between the successes of the two shows and called on her costars to “Help me school. Help me school him #TCCarson #JohnHenton #elvisdidntinventrocknroll - Erika Alexander January 28, 2020 The Internet was quick to remind Schwimmer about that series, with Alexander, who starred as attorney Maxine Shaw, weighing in. “Living Single” was created by Yvette Lee Bowser and starred Queen Latifah, Kim Fields, Erika Alexander, Kim Coles, John Henton and T.C. The Fox comedy “Living Single” aired from 1993 to 1998 and, like “Friends,” focused on six young adults and their intertwined lives in New York City. That was a very conscious push on my part.”Įxcept … there was an all-black version of “Friends” that predated Schwimmer’s series by a year. One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian-American woman, and later I dated African-American women. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of colour. “Maybe there should be an all-black ‘Friends’ or an all-Asian ‘Friends,’” said Schwimmer, who played Ross for 10 seasons. He also discussed his hit NBC series, “Friends,” existing in a “pre-woke” time – before there was as much attention to inclusive storytelling as there is now. In an interview with The Guardian, the actor talked about being “very aware of my privilege as a heterosexual white male.” We are sure David Schwimmer meant well when he talked about diversity and “Friends,” but it went left.
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