Celebrity
Zoe Kravitz Slams ‘Super Homophobic Jokes’ On ‘Friends,’ Says to ‘Keep That’ in the ’90s
Zoë Kravitz is making enemies of Friends fans!
While promoting her new 1998-set movie, Caught Stealing, the actress told People that she’s “really nostalgic” for the final decade of the 20th century.
But when asked what she would leave behind in the ’90s, Kravitz, 36, named the iconic sitcom. “Super homophobic jokes on mainstream television,” she said. “If you watch Friends now, you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s…’”
Her costar Austin Butler, 34, replied, “Wow, even Friends?”
“Oh, so much in Friends,” the Batman star said. “Like, things that aren’t punchlines are punchlines. It’s wild. So maybe that? We can keep that there.”
Butler agreed: “That’s crazy. Yeah, keep that in the ’90s!”
Kravitz isn’t alone in her observations: Other critics have called out the show, which aired from 1994 to 2004, for frequently poking fun of Ross (David Schwimmer) because his ex-wife, Carol, married a woman.
In one episode, Ross is uncomfortable that Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) hires a male nanny for their daughter and assumes the man is gay. He also campaigns to fire the man.
In another running joke, characters frequently assumed Chandler (Matthew Perry) was gay. Kathleen Turner also played Chandler’s father, Charles, a transgender woman.
Though Schwimmer, 58, defended the show for being “groundbreaking” in a 2020 interview with The Guardian, the show’s co-creator, Marta Kauffman, 68, admitted to USA Today in 2019 that “every time I watch an episode, there’s something I wish I could have changed. All the time.”
