Memo to David Schwimmer: “Friends” was not the first “Friends."
While fans have been holding out for a revival of the NBC show, the actor, known for playing Ross on the hit ’90s sitcom, recently commented that maybe an “all-black” or “all-Asian” cast could be a new take on the popular series.
Except “Friends" was already a new take on a show with an all-black cast.
For anyone, like Schwimmer, who seems to have forgotten that fact — along with the whole concept of “living in a ’90s kind of world" — that show was “Living Single."
The concept for the show, which aired on Fox and is currently available on Hulu, proved attractive to NBC, only with an all-white cast.
Schwimmer made the comment in an interview with The Guardian.
“Maybe there should be an all-black ‘Friends’ or an all-Asian ‘Friends,’” the actor said. “But I was well aware of the lack of diversity and I campaigned for years to have Ross date women of color. One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian American woman, and later I dated African American women. That was a very conscious push on my part."
Those who fondly remember “Living Single" immediately seized on the ridiculousness of Schwimmer’s statement and took the opportunity to educate anyone unaware of the link, getting “Living Single” trending on Twitter Tuesday night.
Newark’s own Queen Latifah starred as magazine editor Khadijah James in the series about a group of friends. The show, created by Yvette Lee Bowser, ran from 1993 to 1998.
NBC’s “Friends," created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, premiered in 1994, running with the format of a series that revolved around six friends — only this time it was Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Joey and Chandler, not Khadijah, Overton, Maxine, Regine, Synclaire and Kyle.
Erika Alexander co-starred as attorney Maxine Shaw. She took notice of Schwimmer’s comment, tweeting that he should remedy his ignorance of “Living Single” with no less than a “4 yr edutainment" session, presumably meaning he should binge the entire series.
“Help me school him,” she said, calling on Latifah and co-stars Kim Fields, Kim Coles, T.C. Carson and John Henton. Alexander linked to an interview with Shadow and Act in which she talks about the differences between the marketing of and reception to “Living Single” and “Friends.”
Latifah previously addressed the connection between the two shows.
“We knew we had already been doing that," she told Andy Cohen in a 2017 interview on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live.”
“It was one of those things where it was a guy called Warren Littlefield that used to run NBC, and they asked him when all the new shows came out, they said, ‘If there’s any show you could have, which one would it be?’ And he said ‘Living Single.’ And then he created ‘Friends.’”
At the time, Latifah said she was working on a “Living Single” series revival.
Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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