Featured Image Credit: NBC/Abaca Press / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Film and TV, Friends, Celebrity
Ben Thompson
Topics: Film and TV, Friends, Celebrity
It may have ended nearly twenty years ago, but Aisha Tyler still has people recognising her as 'the black girl from Friends'.
Tyler joined the show's cast in season nine, when she appeared as Charlie Wheeler, a paleontologist who dated dimwitted Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc).
Charlie would stick around for the show's tenth and final season, where she would date fellow dinosaur enthusiast Ross Geller (David Schwimmer).
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However, their romance was not to be as she ultimately dumped Ross to get back with her ex-boyfriend.
Landing the role on the hit sitcom was a big deal for Tyler, who was incredibly nervous on set.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she said: "My knees were knocking. I was shocked you couldn’t hear my teeth chattering the entire time I was on set.
"We walked out, and we did a curtain call [where] everybody [does a] bow to the audience at the end of the show. As we’re backstage, Matthew Perry just leans in and goes, ‘Get ready for your life to change'.
"It was a really sweet, kind thing to say to someone who’s just petrified and just trying not to pee on herself a little bit from fear."
"It was a massive show, a global hit," the actor added. "To this day, people come up to me and go, 'Charlie, Charlie,' or they just go, 'Black girl from Friends.'"
Tyler, who was a fan of Friends before landing the part, thinks she got the role because she was already familiar with the show's humour.
She continued: "The show had a tempo.
"It had a way of kind of turning things on their head and emphasising words in different ways [than] you would in normal conversation.
"They just had a way with wordplay and a way with them with delivering lines. It just felt unique to the show."
Charlie was the only regular character on the sitcom who wasn't white, despite the show being set in ethnically diverse New York City.
In recent years, Friends has attracted some criticism for its lack of racial diversity.
All six of the show's leads - David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry - are white.
Quinta Brunson recently took a potshot at the show while appearing on Saturday Night Live.
During her monologue, the comedian discussed her show Abbott Elementary and drew a comparison with the iconic TV series.
Brunson said: "It's a network sitcom like, say, Friends, except instead of being about a group of friends, it's about a group of teachers.
"Instead of New York, it's in Philadelphia, and instead of not having black people, it does!"