Marta Kauffman, co-creator of the television show Friends, says she regrets the way that a trans character was portrayed on the show, according to E! News. “Pronouns were not yet something that I understood, so we didn’t refer to that character as ‘she.’ That was a mistake.”
Kauffman has also expressed regret recently for the lack of racial diversity in the show’s cast. She donated $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University, to fund a professorship in the African and African American studies department. Kauffman said, “It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism. 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.”
For $4 million, I’m sure Brandeis is more than happy to have Kauffman participate in the conversation as often as she wants. These buzzword-laced apologies are ridiculous, as always. Friends wasn’t racist or transphobic.
If Kauffman is going to apologize for anything, it should be for creating the show at all. Friends is a terrible show, as I’ve written before. In this case, the cancel-culture blind squirrel has found a nut.