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David Schwimmer Talks Friends' Diversity and Pay Parity at BAFTA TV Awards

Published Sun, 12 May 2019 14:56:16 -0500

Nick Mohammed and David Schwimmer just presented the awards for Best Comedy Entertainment Programme at the BAFTA TV Awards, being held and transmitted tonight on BBC1. They followed Phoebe Waller-Bridge who, it seems, is going to get every award she is in any way associated with. But this wasn't one of them.

Nick and David are starring in the upcoming sitcom Intelligence together and took the opportunity to make a number of plugs for the upcoming show that no one has yet really heard of, and David made a pretence of being annoyed at having to fly over from the US this morning if they weren't allowed to plug it properly.

They also took the opportunity to play up the diversity of the BAFTAs these days as an early attempt to win next year's award

"Only half of this pair is a white, heterosexual male," said David.

"We all remember how diverse Friends was," Nick responds.

"Thank you. Yes, it was ground-breaking in that fully half the cast was female. I made sure we were all paid equally." David countered before Nick asked "Sorry, wasn't Courtney making more than the rest of you when you first started?"

"Yes, that was a problem" David quickly snapped back.

Who knew that Schwimmer would get the best-received line of the night (so far)? Things have certainly come a lomg way since Friends…

Intelligence, written by Mohammed and produced by Schwimmer is a sitcom set in the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, with Schwimmer as a power-hungry, maverick NSA agent who joins an inept and tactless computer analyst played by Mohamme) and a newly-formed team tackling cyber-crime. It will be broadcast on Sky One later his year.