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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
Edward Helmore

Friends co-creator to donate $4m amid embarrassment over show’s whiteness

Kauffman on red carpet
Marta Kauffman said after the murder of George Floyd, ‘I began to wrestle with my having bought into systemic racism in ways I was never aware of.’ Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The co-creator of the TV sitcom Friends is planning to donate $4m to an African and African American studies project because she’s so “embarrassed” by – and feels such “guilt” at – the white homogeneity of the characters on the classic coming of age series.

Marta Kauffman told the Los Angeles Times that she intends for her planned gift to fund the Marta F Kauffman 78 Professorship in African and African American Studies at her alma mater, Brandeis University, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

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