Marta Kauffman is making amends. At the beginning of this century she was rich and landed a boatload. But critics claim she didn’t do it justly, so she’s writing a check to balance justice’s scales.
In the early ’90s, Marta co-created the mega-hit Friends,NBC aired the series from 1994 through 2004. It starred Courteney Cooper, Courteney Kudrow and Matthew Perry. It told the stories of six 20-somethings who navigated New York’s ups and downs.
The show only showed a small part of the Big Apple, the white portion.
Los Angeles Times
Non-white characters are absent, with the possible exception of some scattered performers visible in the background to the Central Perk cafe shop where they hung out. FriendsThese were very rare. Although Lauren Tom, Gabrielle Union and Craig Robinson appeared on the program, their interactions with main characters were rarely lasting.
The most high-profile response to the criticism came in 2003 with the appearance of (black actress) Aisha Tyler as a paleontology professor who worked with Ross (Schwimmer) and eventually dated him — after first dating Joey (LeBlanc). But even Tyler’s character was gone after just nine episodes.
Marta once was averse of criticism about a Caucasian takeover of the city.
Kauffman felt Friends was being unfairly singled out, claiming there was too much attention on the near-absence of Black people and other people of color: “It was difficult and frustrating.”
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But now, Kauffman says, she gets it.
Marta, the Times reports, has “had a dramatic change of heart.” She “feels that the criticisms aboutFriends were fair.”
She now knows she is racist.
The series’ failure to be more inclusive, Kauffman says, was a symptom of her internalization of the systemic racism that plagues our society…
She waxed to the outlet via Zoom:
“I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. Accepting and admitting guilt can be difficult. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”
Back during the program’s production, controllers had corrupt ideas about chemistry:
Sometimes producers would counter the criticism by citing the strong chemistry between the stars. But Schwimmer said in a 2020 interview that he felt it was “just wrong” that there was not broader cultural representation on the series. He added that he had pushed for Ross to date diverse women: “I really felt like Ross should date other people, women of all races.”
Evidently, 2020 represented an unrivalled portal to enlightenment. Marta has, without doubt, metamorphized.
She explained:
“It was after what happened to George Floyd that I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of. This was the moment I realized the many ways in which I had been participating. I knew then I needed to course-correct.”
Rapping about her reckoning’s been a raze:
As she spoke out about her own shortcomings, she cried during the panel discussion at 2020 ATX TV Festival.
“What makes this truly emotional for me is that I want this connection I didn’t have,” she said. “I deeply, deeply want this connection with the Black community that I didn’t have. It’s because of Friends, I never attained that.”
But she’s come upon a way to right her wrong: Marta’s contributing a chunk of change to a college, and it can’t be used to elevate white people.
That reckoning was the catalyst for her decision to pledge $4 million to her alma mater, the Boston area’s Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department. …
The Marta F. Kauffman ’78 Professorship in African and African American Studies at the private research university will support a distinguished scholar with a concentration in the study of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora. This gift will allow the department to hire more scholars and teachers and to map out long-term research and academic priorities. It will also provide opportunities for students and faculty to participate in interdisciplinarian scholarship.
Since announcing she’s donating the dough, Marta’s gotten “nothing but love.”
“It’s been amazing. It surprised me to some extent, because I didn’t expect the news to go this wide. I’ve gotten a flood of emails and texts and posts that have been nothing but supportive. I’ve gotten a lot of ‘It’s about time.’ Not in a mean way. It’s just people acknowledging it was long overdue.”
If a person believes they’ve done wrong, they should certainly try to atone for their sin. Is that her intention? Will it satisfy the woken person? Or FriendsContinue to be decried for whiteness pegging red?
Either way, her remorse is somewhat situated by the time traveler’s paradox: A sitcom smash is a one-in-a-million win; if she travels back and recasts the show,You almost never have success with it.
If Marta knows about systemic racism, it would make her far more useful to bring it up. It is not clear why those who claim it exist haven’t pointed to the actual mechanisms that could be used to remove them.
Let’s return to Marta’s penance. She can always give more if her penance falls short. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Marta’s worth $400 million.
-ALEX
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