Friends guest star Stephen Park called the show out for creating an allegedly toxic environment where he and others endured racist name calling and more.
During the Monday, March 3, episode of “Pod Meets World,” Danielle Fishel asked Park about an open letter he released in 1999 following a “disappointing” time on the set of “a very massive” sitcom.
“You wrote way ahead of its time an incredibly brave mission statement to Hollywood about status, power and racism in Hollywood about the difficulties you faced finding work as an Asian actor — and especially work that you felt you could be proud of,” Fishel said. “Can you tell us what the effects of that letter were at the time?”
Park immediately named Friends as the show, adding, “It was at the time, I felt it was kind of a toxic environment. James Hong was the actor who was also on the episode with me, and [the assistant director] was calling him to the set and you know, essentially saying, ‘Where the f—k is the Oriental guy? Get the Oriental guy.’”
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He continued: “This isn’t the first time that this happened, you know, but this is the environment where this is business as usual in Hollywood in 1997, I guess it was. And nobody felt the need to correct this or say anything about it. So this is normal behavior.”
Park, who appeared in two episodes of Friends in 1997, tried to contact the Screen Actors Guild, which led to him writing a “mission statement” that he sent to a publication. Park did several interviews but none of them were published at the time.
“I had become so race-conscious and so angry that I was looking at everything through the lens of race,” he noted. “I felt like there was no freedom. I didn’t feel any freedom. So, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do, but I just decided to drop out. I told everybody, ‘I’m not acting anymore.’”
The incident led Park to take a step back from acting. He eventually did a “slow climb back into the business.” Since his return, Park has appeared in Boy Meets World, Law & Order, The Venture Bros. and Mad About You.
Park isn’t the only guest star to speak out about the show’s lack of diversity. Adam Goldberg previously addressed criticism regarding Friends‘ largely all-White cast.
“In terms of diversity, looking back, it seems insane,” he told The Independent in September 2024. “I’ve heard Black people speak about this and it’s like, you never expected to see yourself, so when you didn’t, it was not a surprise, and you ended up identifying to characters, irrespective of their race.”
Goldberg said having a lack of diversity on TV was “the norm” at the time, adding, “I spent a lot of my career complaining about how Italians can play Jews. You see [Robert] De Niro play Jews, but you very rarely see someone who’s a known Jewish actor playing Italian. So that’s where my head was at.”
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He added: “Or I would get feedback about not being all-American enough, which, you know, if you were to say that to somebody now you’d probably be fired. Or maybe not, because all-American has become such a derisive term. But yes, the entire culture was like that, and television was just an amplification of that culture.”
David Schwimmer, meanwhile, revealed to The Guardian in January 2020 that he “campaigned for years for Ross to date women of [color]” before Aisha Tyler’s character was introduced but he faced backlash for pitching an “all-Black Friends or an all-Asian Friends.”
Actress Erika Alexander called out Schwimmer’s comments, writing via X at the time, “Hey @DavidSchwimmer @FriendsTV — r u seriously telling me you’ve never heard of #LivingSingle? We invented the template! Yr welcome bro.”
In response, Schwimmer issued a lengthy apology, saying, “If my quote was taken out of context, it’s hardly in my control. I assure you I meant no disrespect.”
