Abbott Elementary legend Quinta Brunson has called out 90s sitcom Friends for its lack of Black characters.
The 33-year-old producer, writer, and actress was appearing on Saturday Night Live for the highly-coveted hosting gig landed by numerous celebrities like Kristen Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Kim Kardashian, and Steve Martin.
Brunson took the opportunity to shoutout her award-winning comedy series, Abbott Elementary, which centers on the lives of a group of teachers at a predominantly Black state-funded elementary school in Philadelphia.
During her opening monologue, Brunson drew some comparisons between the show and Friends, saying (via The Independent): "I wanted to be on SNL back in the day but the audition process seemed long - so instead, I just created my own TV show, made sure it became really popular, won a bunch of Emmys and then got asked to host. So much easier, so much easier."
She then explained a little about Abbott Elementary, adding: "It's a network sitcom like, say, Friends. Except, instead of being about a group of friends, it's about a group of teachers. Instead of New York, it's in Philadelphia and instead of not having Black people, it does."
The audience cheered in the background as she made the playful dig about the show's diversity, which has come under fire in recent years for the way it portrays non-white and LGBTQIA+ characters. In fact, one of the show's creators Marta Kauffman confessed in 2022 that she felt so "embarrassed" at the lack of diversity that she pledged $4 million to Brandeis University to fund an endowed chair at the university's African and African American studies department.
"I've learned a lot in the last 20 years," Kauffman stated at the time. "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."
She continued: "It took me a long time to begin to understand how I internalized systemic racism. I've been working really hard to become an ally, an anti-racist. And this seemed to me to be a way that I could participate in the conversation from a white woman's perspective."
Thankfully, Kauffman's donation was well-received. "I've gotten nothing but love. It's been amazing. It surprised me to some extent, because I didn't expect the news to go this wide. I've gotten a flood of emails and texts and posts that have been nothing but supportive. I've gotten a lot of 'It's about time.' Not in a mean way. It's just people acknowledging it was long overdue," Kaufmann admitted.