photo credit: Kathy Hutchins // Shutterstock
David Schwimmer, who starred as Ross on the hit sitcom “Friends,” recently did an interview with The Guardian in which he suggests there be an all-black or all-asian reboot of “Friends.”
In the interview, David said, “Maybe there should be an all-black Friends or an all-Asian Friends. 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.”
The crazy thing is, “Living Single,” a show about the lives of 6 young, black friends in a Brooklyn brownstone, aired in August 1993, a whole year before “Friends” in 1994.
Erika Alexander, who played Maxine Shaw on “Living Single,” tweeted to David asking if he had really never heard of the their show. Educating him on the fact that they “invented that template.” After that, “Living Single” became one of the top 5 trenders on Twitter as majority of black Twitter lit David up!
In a reply to Erika, David says, “I didn’t mean to imply Living Single hadn’t existed or indeed hadn’t come before Friends, which I knew it had.” He continued, “I was a fan of Living Single, and was not implying Friends was the first of its kind,” acknowledging that the show had come a year before Friends.
He added, “Please remember in an interview quotes are often pieced together and taken out of context, and then these quotes are re-purposed in other articles by other people who are trying to be provocative.”
https://twitter.com/DavidSchwimmer/status/1222580640228528128?s=20
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 pic.twitter.com/uDQz2oxqID
— Joshua Chenault (@joshuachenault1) January 28, 2020
Can someone explain to David Schwimmer that Friends WAS an all-white reboot of the all-Black Living Single? https://t.co/A82J5Q3kWo
— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 28, 2020