The Racist Friends Spin-off that Never Aired
In 2003, writer and producer David Crane approached me to guest-write a one-off, racist episode of the multi-award winning sitcom Friends. Laughs were put on hiatus, and characters instead asked to negotiate a gritty, thought-provoking gauntlet of taboos. For conflict, we added a towering, blinged-out, streetwise African American called Leeroy to the plot, as Chandler’s adopted brother.
Unfortunately, the network censor would not sanction our footage, branding it gratuitously racist. To this day the reels sit collecting dust in the archives of NBC. Judge for yourself: were we silenced for overshooting the mark? Or was our mirror too uncomfortable for society to gaze into?
INT: CENTRAL PERK — AT THE COUCHES — MORNING
Joey: Hey gang, what’s happening?
Phoebe: Hi Joey.
Chandler: Hiya Joe.
Monica: Hey Joe
Ross: Hi Joe.
Rachel: Hiya Joey.
Leeroy: What up J-dog?
Ross: Hey, anybody hear about the shooting in Park Avenue this morning?
Monica: Park Avenue? No, what happened?
Chandler: Oh, I heard about that. A mugging, right?
Ross: Yeah, a mugging. The guy put up a fight, so the mugger takes out a gun and shoots him, point blank.
Rachel: Is he dead?
Ross: Yeah, he died an hour later.
Phoebe: Oh that’s awful.
Rachel: Poor man.
Joey: Damn blacks.
Chandler's brother, Leeroy Bing
Leeroy: Say what?
Joey: Huh?
Leeroy: What the f*ck you just say?
Joey: What did I say?
Leeroy: That’s what I’m asking. What did you just say?
Joey: I said, you know, I hope they catch these animals.
Leeroy: That ain’t what you said. Think hard, J-Dog. Think real hard.
Joey: Look Leeroy, I’m not trying to ‘diss’ your people.
Leeroy: Oh hell no. No you didn’t.
Chandler: I think we all need to calm down here for a…
Leeroy: Naw, naw C-Man, ain’t nobody need to calm down. Your boy here needs to explain what the f*ck he talkin about.
Ross: Leeroy, I don’t think he meant…
Leeroy: Naw Ross, he’s a big boy. Let the man speak for himself.
Joey: I’m just saying, statistically, you know, the gunman is probably more likely to be…
Leeroy: To be what?
Joey: …you know?
Leeroy: No. Tell us?
Joey: …a black man.
Leeroy: Mother f*cker, I’m gonna f*ck you up.
(Leeroy lunges at Joey and is restrained by Chandler and Ross).
Gunter: That’s it, you’re all out of here. This is a family establishment. You’re all barred.
INT: CHANDLER’S APARTMENT — AFTERNOON
Leeroy: How can you hang with him, dog?
Chandler: Come on man, he’s my best friend. So he’s a little racist…
Leeroy: A little racist? Dude’s this close to pulling on a white sheet. You hear that knock-knock joke he told yesterday? A little racist? Mother f*ckin joke damn near insulted half the earth.
Chandler: You don’t understand. Where he was brought up, everybody…
Leeroy: Man, don’t tell me that sh*t. That ain’t no excuse. Remember what Mom used to say?
Chandler: I remember.
Leeroy: Do you?
Chandler: I remember. She said racism isn’t hereditary.
Leeroy: That’s right.
Chandler: I’ll talk to him.
INT: JOEY’S APARTMENT — AFTERNOON
Rachel: You’re going to have to apologise.
Joey: I know.
Rachel: Joey, times are different now. You can’t say things like that any more.
Joey: I know.
Rachel: I mean that Knock-knock joke you told yesterday would be deeply offensive to…well…pretty much everybody. Asians in particular, but also Indians, Irish, Jews, pacific islanders, Eskimos…
Joey: It’s just how I was raised Raich.
Rachel:…pygmies, native Americans, Africans, fishermen, Arabs…
Joey: I know. I’ll put this right, I promise.
Rachel: …Muslims, women, hermaphrodites…
Joey: I get it Raich.
INT: CHANDLER’S APARTMENT — AFTERNOON
Phoebe: …where, in pottery barn? Is the sale still on?
Monica: Yeah, but only until Sunday. There’s 33% off the stuff on the ground floor, and 50% off the…
Leeroy: Now what you fine ass, white bitches talkin about?
Phoebe: Only furniture.
Monica: Leeroy. How can I put this?
Leeroy: Spit it out Mon. I can dig it.
Monica: With the whole Joey thing that’s going on, don’t you think calling us ‘white bitches’ might be a little…off?
Leeroy: Two different things Mon. I ain’t implying you criminals and sh*t.
Monica: I know, I know. But truthfully? I’m not comfortable with it Leeroy. I’ve been biting my tongue for a while.
Leeroy: Phoebe? You down with this?
Phoebe: A little Leeroy, yeah.
Leeroy: Ok, that’s cool, that’s cool. I’ll drop the ‘white’ sh*t.
Monica: Thanks Leeroy.
Phoebe: We appreciate it.
Leeroy: Ain’t no thang. All right, I’m late for work. I’ll catch you bitches later.
INT: CHANDLER’S APARTMENT — NIGHT
Joey: Leeroy.
Leeroy: Joey.
Joey: Can we talk?
Leeroy: Free country.
Chandler: Eh..Ross, Raich, Phoebe? Could you all give me a hand in the bedroom? I need to move a wardrobe.
Leeroy: Yeah, get the f*ck out. Me and Joey need some privacy.
Joey: I want to apologise for what I said this morning.
Leeroy: You apologisin coz you think you should, or because you know what you said was whack?
Joey: Both?
Leeroy: That ain’t good enough, J – Dog.
Joey: Come on man, I’m trying. My eyes are opening, but I’ve been blind for a long time. It’s not going to happen over night. But I promise I’m going to work on it. I’ll get there Leeroy. With your help, and with God’s help. You’re my friend, and I want to make this right. Will you help me?
Leeroy: All right J-Dog. All right. I’m gonna hook you up.
Rachel: Is everybody friends again?
Leeroy: Yeah, come on outta there you bitches. We good.
Monica: Oh, what a relief. We’ve been walking on eggshells around you guys all day.
Phoebe: Yeah, I hate it when we fight.
Ross: New DVD player Chandler?
Chandler: Yeah, I got it yesterday.
Ross: Chitachi? What is that, Japanese?
Chandler: No, I believe it’s Chinese.
Ross: Chinese? What were you thinking? Everybody knows the Chinese can’t manufacture electrical goods worth a damn. Their hands are too small.
(Everybody hovers in awkward silence for several seconds).
Leeroy: Oh well. Here we go again!
(Everybody breaks into convulsions of laughter. The picture freeze frames, and the credits roll over the applause from the live studio audience).
I’m telling you, Flann, you went wrong when you made Leeroy Chandler’s adopted brother. Chandler should have been Leeroy’s adopted brother. How beautifully inverted would that have been? Ain’t no streetwise black dude need adopting! The stuffy, sarky twat in therapy is the one who needs adopting! Word!
Besides, Bing/Bling? Pretty close.
It’s obvious why this was never picked up. Joey’s not the problem, it’s Leroy. He needs better product placement; going shirtless just doesn’t cut it on TV, try an Old Navy sweater. Leroy can get a few tips here.
After all, it’s not like a black guy’s gonna end up running the country or anything, so Leroy should really get with the program.
Sweary, when you’re right, you’re right. And on this occasion, you are spot on. The script shouldn’t have tackled one single taboo. It should have been PACKED with taboos.
e.g.
- Phoebe is exposed as a mid-op transsexual when Ross catches her pissing standing up, writing her name on a wall behind Central Perk in urine.
- Ross is exposed as having no PHD, and instead makes his living engaging in Asian sex trafficking
- Rachel admits she spent the missing years between high-school and the Friends time frame felating drug dealers for heroin fixes
- Monica confides that she knocked down and killed a woman some years back, and just kept driving. An innocent man was wrongly convicted of vehicular manslaughter, and languishes in jail to this day.
Hard to pack all this into 30 minutes? Undoubtedly. But that would have been the challenge.
Fat Sparrow, what you can’t see in that photo of Leeroy is that he’s wearing Pepsi trousers. Also, he has “Bud Light” shaved into the back of his head.
Where you went wrong was leaving out the joke. You’ll find, through extensive days in a row with coco-pops, a duvet and E4 during the non-big brother period, that you can see the entire back catalog of friends within 2 weeks. After doing this and developing some bitchin’ bed sore’s you will learn that in all of friends there has only been 4 or so african-american characters. Only one of which had a recurring part.
What happened when they were there was that the joke’s continued as if there was no issue. But if you look closely you could see even the nipples on Ms Aniston were retreating in fear of Racist reaction-ism.
The only solution would to take a book from father ted and shine one character in a hilarious bad light, or just sacrifice Gunther as a hidden sadomasochist nazi-vampire fangbanger.
Mr Dullard, you are indeed wise in the domain of situation comedy racism. It’s also interesting you mention Gunther, as I wrote an entire, 24 episode spin-off imaginatively titled ‘Gunther’ (this was long before ‘Joey’ aired). We filmed a half-dozen of the episodes, but a focus group reacted badly to the new program and it was binned.
Replacing the actor who originally played Gunther with Michael Madsen was, in hindsight, a mistake. Where once Gunther had been a light-hearted character, Madsen brought a new menace to the role, reflected in so many of his storylines involving bar fights. The episode where Madsen beat Ross into a coma especially repulsed our test audience.
Similarly, the scenes set in Iraq didn’t really have the budget to establish a credible gulf ambience. For two episodes straight, Gunther was tortured relentlessly by members of Saddam’s republican guard. In hindsight, the pre-water shed violence was hard to stomach. Especially when they cut off the little toe on each of Gunther’s feet and force-fed them to him.
Hola Flann!
That is probably the best episode ever! The only problem is that there are still too many Jews in it.
Besos
Manuel
If I had my way Manuel, they’d all be scientologists. Every last damn one of them.
Is that Leroy lad related to yer man who dropped Brian O’Driscoll on his head? or was it Ronan O’Gara? (they all look the same to me)
Why would Chandler’s mother and mother/father thing adopt another child? That’s what I’m suspicious of.
Galwaywegian: No, but I believe he is related to a man who once took a swing at Mother Theresa. Messy, messy business.
B: Why does anybody adopt a child B? Revenge? Welfare fraud? Low-paid/Non-paid domestic help? The list is literally ending (those are the only three).
hee hee hee so funny, I will always imaging Leeroy when I watch my Friends boxset
Funny, Jelly Monster? I assure you that wasn’t my intention. Specifically, I was hoping to single-handedly end racism. Then I was going to do world hunger, maybe world peace, and then write an autobiography called ‘Jesus 2: How I Sorted out the World’.
If you ask me, the Joey and Leeroy dynamic could have been the money sexual tension pairing of the show. All the angst was wasted on Ross and Rachel.
Dead right Liv. Joey and Leeroy were Sonny to our Cher. Turner to our Hooch. Beyonce to our Christina Aguilera (etc).
i understand that this uses reversed irony, but, well it’s not funny, you give comedy a bad name, not through being racist, i understand that u are mocking racists subversively, but hell u could have done it well.
No problem Key Kutt. Can’t please ‘em all.