Featured Image Credit: NBC
Topics: Friends, Film and TV, Saturday Night Live
Joe Harker
Saturday Night Live host Quinta Brunson decided to poke fun at the lack of black characters in Friends during her opening monologue on the show.
Back when it was on, Friends was pretty much the most popular comedy in the world. Millions of people would tune in every week, etching each moment into their memories to the point that some people could probably recite every episode from memory.
However, in more recent years, the comedy has come in for criticism as some of the jokes haven't aged very well at all.
On top of that, some of the representation was handled in such a way that the show's creators feel bad about it now. As younger generations of fans have grown up, they've been pointing out that certain characters have behaved pretty awfully.
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Quinta Brunson took aim at something else, however, and that's the lack of Black characters who appeared on Friends.
During her opening monologue, she joked that she always wanted to be on SNL, but the audition process seemed difficult. She poked fun and said that she took the easy route and 'created my own TV show, made sure it became really popular, won a bunch of Emmys and then got asked to host'.
The Abbott Elementary creator explained what her show was like, drawing some parallels with that famous sitcom Friends, only with one rather clear difference.
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She 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!"
The joke got a huge cheer from the SNL crowd as Brunson continued with her opening monologue, going on to praise the difficult job teachers have to do, while highlighting how they 'get taken for granted'.
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Brunson was technically wrong to say that Friends didn't have any Black characters, as someone totted up the total number of characters on the show, and found that it was a whole whopping 27.
However, looking through that list really rather proves her point, as they include such memorable characters as 'Mattress King Delivery Guy', 'Child looking at Chandler', 'Security Guard', and of course who could forget, 'Man'.
Alright, alright, most of those who made the list do actually have names for their characters, and some of them are even allowed to speak, even if it's only one line.
The longest running Black character in the show was Aisha Tyler's Charlie Wheeler, who managed to appear in a whole nine episodes out of the Friends roster of 236.