Comedy has become ‘sensitive’ today: Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston, who is popular for her character Rachel Green in the American sitcom ‘Friends’, recently shared how certain viewers these days take issue with the iconic show. She has definitely come a long way, but the show and her character are still engraved in people’s minds. Not just the character of Rachel, every character is still very memorable even years after the show ended. Generations change with time hence, people criticising it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The NBC comedy first aired in 1994 and ran till 2004. It had 10 seasons. Besides Jennifer, the main cast comprised Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc. In the past few years, many criticised the show and deemed it sexist and homophobic. They even called it out for allegedly being fat shaming.

While speaking to AFP, the ‘Friends’ star shared her take on it. Jennifer Aniston said, “There’s a whole generation of people and kids who are now going back to episodes of ‘Friends’ and find them offensive.”

“There were things that were never intentional and others, well, we should have thought it through, but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now,” she added.

Aniston also spoke about how doing comedy these days is a ‘tricky’ thing: “Comedy and movies have evolved. Now it’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians. Because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, make fun of life.”

She shared how previously on TV shows they ‘could joke about a bigot’ and people would laugh but that is not the scenario today: “It was about educating people on how ridiculous people were and now we’re not allowed to do that.”