Jessica Hecht gave her take on David Schwimmer’s comments about Friends’ diversity, giving high praise to the actor who played her onscreen wife’s ex-husband on the NBC hit.
“He’s a great humanist and a great person, and I think he probably was pushing for [diversity],” Hecht, 54, told Us Weekly at the West Hollywood premiere of The Sinner season 3 on Monday, February 3.
She continued: “I guess I was representative of some sort of diversity that was at play. It’s funny because when I was doing it … people were wrapped up in the fact that I was playing a gay character that was getting married. That was so ahead of its time. We see things through the lens of wherever we are. So for me, I felt like it was such an exciting time. … From my little perspective, I thought it was really cool.”
Schwimmer, 53, reflected on Friends’ legacy in an interview with The Guardian last month, following years of accusations that the sitcom perpetuates sexism, homophobia and transphobia.
“I don’t care,” the actor said of the backlash. “The truth is also that show was groundbreaking in its time for the way in which it handled so casually sex, protected sex, gay marriage and relationships. The pilot of the show was my character’s wife left him for a woman and there was a gay wedding, of my ex and her wife, that I attended.”
Schwimmer also argued that the show should be viewed in its context. “You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time,” he said. “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.”
He continued: “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.”
A day after the interview hit the web, actress Erika Alexander called out the Emmy nominee’s idea for an “all-black Friends,” saying that she and her costars on the Fox sitcom Living Single, which aired from 1993 to 1998, “invented the template.” Schwimmer replied via Twitter the following day to tell Alexander, 50, that he “didn’t mean to imply that Living Single hadn’t existed” and “meant no disrespect.”
On Monday, Hecht expressed ambivalence about Schwimmer’s ideas for a Friends reboot with an all-black or all-Asian cast. “I don’t know that I’m interested in only seeing one ethnic group represented at all,” she said. “I think it’s like, I would love to see shows that are representative of not an affinity for one ethnicity but the affinity for people getting beyond that.”
Additionally, the Breaking Bad alum is “not necessarily” interested in a Friends reboot at all. “I think we should move on from ideas,” she said. “I think that the landscape of time now, in terms of the way people communicate, is very different than it was then. … I would actually love to see like an All in the Family reboot — like, something [with] issues that would be shocking for us to look at.”
The Sinner season 3 premieres on USA on Thursday, February 6, at 9 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
