Friends, which ran for a decade between 1994 and 2004 and boasted 52 million viewers for its finale, is not loved by Zoë Kravitz, and as far as she is concerned, it can stay in the ’90s.
The sitcom, as noted by the Emmys website, is “just as popular now as it was during its heyday, when it averaged 25 million viewers each week.”
But even so, the sitcom’s own creator, Marta Kauffman, also has a cringe moment every time she watches an episode.
Highlights
- Zoë Kravitz and Austin Butler chatted with People about their new film, Caught Stealing, and revisiting ’90s nostalgia.
- Kravitz praised the fashion and culture—but slammed Friends for “super homophobic jokes.”
- Butler seemed surprised: “Wow, even in Friends?”
Zoë Kravitz discussed how she enjoyed being around things from the ’90s
Image credits: zoeisabellakravitz
Kravitz and Caught Stealing co-star Austin Butler were discussing their new movie with People when Kravitz talked about how much fun she had revisiting the '90s on set and toying with answering machines and VHS video machines.
“Even just being in the apartment [on set] and seeing the Nintendo 64 on top of the TV. We had the GoldenEye, I saw that,” Butler chimed in, who also appreciated “not having a cellphone on him all the time.”
“Or my cell phone was that Nokia brick thing,” remarked Kravitz, to which Butler replied, “You had a big old thing, yeah.”
Image credits: People
Kravitz said it was “really nostalgic for that time,” and spoke about the era’s fashion, describing it as “so cool.”
“New York City and the grunge. ... It’s a good time.”
Co-star Austin Butler was surprised by Kravitz’s stance
The conversation then took a turn to what they were happy to leave behind, and the first thing Kravitz called out was “Super homophobic jokes on mainstream television.”
Image credits: NBC/Getty Images
Tellingly, she named the sitcom Friends to make her point. “If you watch Friends now, you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s....’”
This answer surprised even Butler, who shot back: “Wow, even in Friends?”
Kravitz was not deterred and said, “Oh, so much in Friends. Like, things that aren’t punchlines are punchlines. It’s wild. So maybe that? We can keep that there.”
Butler, either because he had never seen it that way or had never watched the sitcom, found the idea “crazy,” but he conceded, “Yeah, keep that in the ’90s!”
The show’s co-creator expressed similar sentiments in 2019
Image credits: People
Kravitz is not the only one who sees things this way. Ironically, the show’s co-creator, Marta Kauffman, vented similar sentiments in a 2019 interview with USA Today.
Speaking to Michelle R. Martinelli, she said, “Every time I watch an episode, there’s something I wish I could have changed.”
Echoing Kravitz’s observations, she pointed to Season 8’s The One with the Rumor with Brad Pitt.
Image credits: NBC
“I might have not done the hermaphrodite stuff today if I had that to do over in the one with Brad Pitt.”
Marta Kauffman says they were ignorant when they made the show
Kauffman further noted that many of these perceived blunders were based on ignorance back then.
“I think we didn’t have the knowledge about transgender people back then, so I’m not sure if we used the appropriate terms,” she told her interviewer.
Image credits: NBC
“I don’t know if I would have known those terms back then. I think that’s the biggest one.”
But not everyone who participated in the high-grossing sitcom, which aired on Netflix and now HBO, sees the show’s humor as inappropriate.
The actor who played Ross in the series disagreed
A year after Kauffman’s admission, David Schwimmer, who played Ross in the series, chatted to The Guardian about his tenure on the show.
Image credits: Larry King/YouTube
Sitting in a New York restaurant, his interviewer picked his brain on several issues, including an article by The Independent that spotlighted shocked millennials when they watched Friends for the first time.
The writer reported the then-middle-aged actor getting defensive. “I don’t care,” he told his interviewer, David Smith.
“I feel that a lot of the problem today in so many areas is that so little is taken in context.”
Despite Gen Y’s trepidations, the show’s ratings are almost as good as they were between 2004 and 2014
Image credits: zoeisabellakravitz
“You have to look at it from the point of view of what the show was trying to do at the time. 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,” Schwimmer claimed.
“I was already really attuned to social issues and issues of equality.”
A report by The Wrap suggested that Gen Y’s distaste is failing to make inroads into the sitcom’s ongoing success. Around the same time, Friends enjoyed the status of the most-watched show on HBO Max.
Two decades after it ended, Friends remained the fifth most-watched series in America
Image credits: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Image credits: Sony Pictures Entertainment
A piece published by the Emmys website on the 20th anniversary of Friends noted: “To say the show was a ‘big deal’ is an understatement.”
“As was the somewhat daunting task of landing the series finale, which aired 20 years ago today on May 6, 2004,” the platform reported in May 2024.
“It was watched by 52.5 million people, making it the fifth most-watched series finale in U.S. history.”
Some think Zoë Kravitz is starting a controversy so her new movie gets views
