Aisha Tyler recalls beating out Lisa Bonet for her Friends role

Aisha Tyler's time on Friends was unique for being the only Black actor in a recurring role on the series. Even at the time, Tyler recalls in a new interview with The Independent, people had taken notice of Friends' overwhelming whiteness. "But what I liked was that they just wrote this smart, sexy character and she happened to be Black and they weren’t trying to seismically change what the show was," she reflects, "but they were aware of the fact that it didn’t feel totally representative of the world as it existed then or had existed for many, many, many decades."

Tyler came from the world of stand-up and had hosted Talk Soup, but Friends was such a juggernaut hit by then she assumed the role of Ross' love interest Charlie would go to someone more famous. "I did one audition and then I went back and read with David [Schwimmer]. I walked in and there were a lot of very famous people there, with a lot of different looks and ethnic backgrounds. Again, it was very clear to me, 'I'm just absolutely not getting this job,'" she recalled. "I remember Lisa Bonet was there and I was confident she’d get it—she was glowing like a goddess and floating above the floor looking like her incredible self."

Instead, Tyler was cast. (When she got the call, "I remember almost wrecking the car, having to pull over to the side of the road," she said.) Though Charlie wasn't written in the script explicitly as a woman of color, "I knew that me coming on the show was an aspect of that self-reflection" on the show's lack of diversity, she said. "Friends was also reflective of a whole business that thought that only white stories sold. I mean, that’s just been the attitude in Hollywood for a long time. They’d say people won’t watch a show with these characters, and now we all know that’s not true," Tyler added. "But that perspective still persists and there are still people who will say, well, that movie won’t sell overseas if it has a Black lead, and that movie won’t sell in these markets if it has a gay lead."

Friends' persistent lack of diversity is something that comes up more often in discussions of the show's legacy. Regardless, that legacy endures on the strength of the material and the ensemble. As Tyler observed, "It’s amazing how much people still focus on Friends. Imagine if I’d done a PowerPoint presentation in my office at 25, and now I’m 55, and everyone still wants to talk about that one PowerPoint presentation. It’s all anyone wants to know about. Like, it was just such a good PowerPoint presentation!" Read the full interview here.