In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Tyler shared what it was like being one of the only prominent and recurring black actors on the iconic show.

“It was a massive show, a global hit. To this day, people come up to me and go, ‘Charlie, Charlie’, or they just go, ‘Black girl from Friends‘.”

At the 2021 Friends reunion, it was highlighted that no black cast members had made an appearance.

Marta Kauffman, one of the show’s co-creators has considered the criticism surrounding the show, telling the Los Angeles Times that she has “learned a lot in the last 20 years.”

“Admitting and accepting guilt is not easy. It’s painful looking at yourself in the mirror. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know better 25 years ago.”

Kauffman then proceeded to donate $4 million to the African and African American studies department at Brandeis University, in which she used to study.

“It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism.”

Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay in the sitcom, defended Kauffman’s choices by sharing her thoughts: “Well, I feel like it was a show created by two people who went to Brandeis and wrote about their lives after college.”

“They have no business writing stories about the experiences of being a person of colour.”