Kathleen Turner would ‘probably not’ take transgender role on Friends today
Julia Johnson
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Movie star Kathleen Turner, 68, revealed that she likely wouldn’t take the role of Chandler Bing’s transgender father on Friends if she were offered it today.
“It never crossed my mind that I was taking a role from someone,” Turner, who starred in ’80s movies such as Body Heat and Romancing the Stone, said in an interview.
At the time, she explained, “there was no question of casting a trans person or a drag queen — it was never considered.”
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In response to whether she would take on the role today, Turner said, “Probably not.”
However, she noted, “I certainly don’t regret having taken it. It was a challenge!”
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On the popular sitcom, Bing’s father was a biological man that identified as a transgender woman, thus the casting of a woman to portray the character. In an interview last summer, the show’s co-creator Marta Kauffman said it was a “mistake” to refer to the character as Bing’s father.
“Pronouns were not yet something that I understood,” she said. “So we didn’t refer to that character as ‘she.’ That was a mistake.”
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Also last summer, Kauffman apologized for Friends’s lack of diversity, offering her alma mater Brandeis University’s African and African American Studies Department a donation of $4 million.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years,” she said 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.”