Zoë Kravitz divided opinions after criticizing some jokes in Friends and explaining why she believes we should leave the beloved sitcom “in the past.”
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The subject came up during the promotion of her new movie Caught Stealing, co-starring Austin Butler. The film is set in the 1990s, so the two talked about the good and bad aspects of that era.
“[I’m] very nostalgic for that time. And also the fashion, all of that is so cool. New York and grunge,” Kravitz told PEOPLE magazine.
“Even being in the apartment [on set] and seeing the Nintendo 64 on top of the TV. We had the
GoldenEye, I saw that,” Butler added.
Both agreed that they miss an era without smartphones, but admitted that not everything was perfect. Among the negatives, Kravitz pointed to the “super homophobic jokes on television.”
“If you watch Friends now, you think: ‘Wow, that’s…’ Oh, so much in Friends. Like, things that aren’t jokes are jokes. It’s crazy. So maybe that? We can leave that there,” the actress added.
Butler, who said he was surprised that those kinds of jokes were in the sitcom, echoed Kravitz’s sentiment, saying it’s something the world should “leave in the 1990s.”
Even with fans defending the sitcom tooth and nail, even the creators of Friends have admitted that there are some jokes they wish they had changed afterward.
“Every time I watch an episode, there’s something I wish I had changed,” said Marta Kauffman, who co-wrote Friends alongside David Crane, to USA Today in 2019.
“Like, how did we leave that joke in? Or actually, that storyline? Was that what we went with?” she explained, adding her perspective on how Friends would be if it were written today.
“I don’t think we had enough knowledge about transgender people at the time, so I’m not sure we used the appropriate terms. I don’t know if I would have even known those terms back then. I think that’s the biggest one.”
Photo and video: Creative Commons / Divulgação / Warner Bros. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
