- Stephen Park described “Friends” as a “toxic environment” when he guest-starred during a recent podcast interview.
- Park guest-starred in seasons two and three of “Friends” and said he heard racist comments on set.
- “Nobody felt the need to correct this or say anything about it. So this is normal behavior.”
Despite its reputation as one of the most celebrated sitcoms of all time, one “Friends” guest star said the environment on set was uncomfortable for Asian actors.
“It was at the time, for me, I felt it was kind of a toxic environment,” Korean-American actor Stephen Park said on an episode of the “Pod Meets World” a podcast.
Park appeared in a small role as a data-processing colleague of Chandler Bing (the late Matthew Perry) in the season two episode “The One With the Chicken Pox.”
He described hearing racist slurs on set while making his second appearance on the show, in season three’s “The One With the Ultimate Fighting Champion,” which aired in 1997 and also guest-starred James Hong (“Blade Runner,” “Mulan,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once”).
“James Hong was the actor who was also on the episode with me, and [the assistant director] was calling him to the set and you know, essentially saying, ‘Where the fuck is the Oriental guy? Get the Oriental guy,'” Park recalled on the podcast.
Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
“This is bigger than this show,” Park added. “This isn’t the first time that this happened, you know, 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.”
Fed up by the incident, Park wrote a “mission statement” outlining racism in Hollywood and sent it to everyone who’d signed up for his email list.
“Being an Asian-American actor, I continue to struggle to find roles for myself that are not insulting and stereotypical,” he wrote at the time, according to archived versions available online.
“I just finished working as a guest star on one of the highest-rated shows on television, which brings me to my next point,” Park continued. “Working with the people involved with this show was an extremely painful experience for me. A disturbing lack in generosity of spirit and basic human courtesy, in addition to a racial incident on the set, has forced me to speak out.”
Park said the email made a big impression in Hollywood circles — that “it went viral before ‘viral’ was even a word” — and ended up getting published in several other publications, but ultimately did little to quell his concerns.
“I had become so race-conscious and so angry that I was looking at everything through the lens of race,” Park said on the podcast. “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’s break didn’t last forever. He’ll next appear alongside Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon-ho’s highly anticipated dystopian comedy “Mickey 17.”
In recent years, he has also appeared in multiple Wes Anderson films, including 2023’s “Asteroid City” and 2021’s “The French Dispatch,” and Joon-Ho’s 2013 thriller “Snowpiercer.”
