Although Friends is widely regarded as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, one guest star said working on the show was nothing short of “toxic.”
Veteran actor Stephen Park shared his experience in a recent episode of Pod Meets World, recalling a racist incident that occurred on the set of the NBC series. Park said the moment went down while filming the Season 3 episode “The One With the Ultimate Fighting Champion” (1997), which also featured fellow Asian-American actor James Hong.
“At the time, for me, I felt it was kind of a toxic environment,” Park explained. “This racist — the [assistant director] calling James Hong… he was calling him to the set and essentially saying, ‘Where the f*ck is the oriental guy?!? Get the Oriental guy!’”
Park — who also appeared in Friends Season 2 — said the incident led him to contact the Screen Actors Guild in the hopes they could address the problem. However, the labor union suggested he instead write a letter to the Los Angeles Times. Park took the advice and penned a lengthy mission statement detailing the bigotry within the entertainment business.
“‘Why don’t I write a mission statement to Hollywood because this is bigger than this show,’” he recalled telling himself. “‘This isn’t the first time this has happened, but this is the environment where this is business as usual in Hollywood.’ In 1997, I guess it was. And nobody felt the need to correct this or say anything about it. So, this is normal behavior.”
He published the statement online and began sending it to his media contacts as well as the LA Times. Park said the mission statement quickly made a splash, so much so that a “couple of reporters” had interviewed him about his experience. But despite the immediate interest, the article was never published.
A couple of years after appearing in Friends, Park decided to quit acting.
“I had become so race-conscious and so angry that I was looking at everything through the lens of race,” Park explained. “I felt like there was no freedom. I didn’t feel any freedom. So, I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do, but I just decided to drop out. I told everybody, ‘I’m not acting anymore.’”
Park eventually began a “slow climb back into the business” and has kept pretty busy ever since. He’s appeared in TV series, like Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Snow Piercer, and The Mindy Project as well as feature films like The French Dispatch, Asteroid City, and the upcoming sci-fi dark comedy Mickey 17.
