“I feel like we’ve been too afraid to make jokes that might make people uncomfortable.”
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Actress and former “Friends” star Lisa Kudrow said in a recent interview that it’s time for the entertainment industry to get back to telling jokes. “I think we need to get back to being able to tell jokes,” she told Lily Tomlin in Interview magazine. “I feel like we’ve been too afraid to make jokes that might make people uncomfortable.”
In the interview with legendary American comedian and actress Lily Tomlin, Kudrow spoke about the state of American sit-coms, of which “Friends” was one of the most successful of all time.
“Do you think sitcoms are dying or are they just evolving?” Tomlin asked Kudrow.
“I wish they were evolving,” Kudrow said. “’30 Rock’ and ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Friends’ were really funny and really well written. But I’m not drawn to new sitcoms that are multi-camera in front of an audience because I’m not buying it. I don’t know if that’s just because I’ve seen too many single-camera sitcoms—I think we need to get back to being able to tell jokes. I feel like we’ve been too afraid to make jokes that might make people uncomfortable.”
“The multi-cameras with an audience,” said Tomlin, who stars in “Grace and Frankie” on Netflix, “they’re not short on jokes.”
“Right,” Kudrow acknowledged, “but the really good ones, they’re not tame jokes. They’re jokes that are kind of, ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’ Comedy is about surprise. You need things you didn’t see coming.”
“Friends” has been running in syndication for decades, but the co-creator of the show, Marta Kauffman, has apologized for the lack of diversity in the show. Featuring six friends, three women and three men, all of whom were white, the show has been criticized in the age of identitarianism for being too white.
In 2022, Kauffman pledged $4 million to Brandeis University’s African and African American studies department. “I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” Kauffman said. “Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
Kauffman made the statements during the racial reckoning following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, which she said prompted her to “course-correct.”
“It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism,” Kauffman said. “I’ve been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist. And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman’s perspective.”
Her fellow co-creator, Kevin Bright, had a different perspective. When the show had a reunion in 2021 and faces backlash over the lack of diversity, Bright said the cast was chosen for their chemistry.
“I would have been insane not to hire those six actors. What can I say? I wish Lisa was black?” Bright said at the time.
