Friends creator regrets misused pronouns for Chandler's trans mother: 'That was a mistake'

Friends creator Marta Kauffman has admitted that the popular NBC sitcom initially mishandled representation of Chandler's (Matthew Perry) transgender mother.

"We kept referring to her as Chandler's father, even though Chandler's father was trans," Kauffman said during a recent interview for the BBC World Service's The Conversation series. In the discussion, she referenced the character of Helena, who was portrayed by Oscar-nominated actress Kathleen Turner on three season 7 episodes — including one titled "The One with Chandler's Dad" — back in 2001.

"Pronouns were not yet something that I understood," Kauffman continued. "So we didn't refer to that character as she. That was a mistake."

Kauffman, who went on to create the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie, said her views have progressed, and that she once "fired a guy on the spot for making a joke about a trans cameraperson," stressing that incidents of discrimination "just can't happen."

On Friends, Helena was regularly the butt of jokes on the program, with Turner later revealing that she, too, regretted the portrayal.

"I don't think it's aged well. It was a 30-minute sitcom. It became a phenomenon, but no one ever took it seriously as a social comment," Turner told the Gay Times in 2018, adding that people felt the character was "just dressing up" instead of accepting her identity as legitimate. "How they approached with me with it, was 'would you like to be the first woman playing a man playing a woman?' I said yes, because there weren't many drag/trans people on television at the time."

EW has reached out to a representative for Kauffman — whose full Conversation interview will be broadcast on July 11 — for more information.

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