While “Friends” remains one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time, actor Stephen Park, who appeared in Season 2 episode “The One With the Chicken Pox” and Season 3’s “The One With the Ultimate Fighting Champion,” doesn’t remember his time on the show fondly.
“It was at the time, I felt it was kind of a toxic environment,” Park said during a recent appearance on the “Pod Meets World” podcast. “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.’”
He continued, “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.”
Park added that he tried to contact the Screen Actors Guild about the incident and the representative he spoke with “recommended I write an article to the L.A. Times.” Park wrote a “mission statement” and sent it to the publication. They eventually did send “a couple of reporters” to interview him, but Park said it was never published.
Park eventually released his statement to everyone on his “email list” as an open letter (which can be found via internet archives). The “Mickey 17” actor said upon sending it out, the letter “went viral before ‘viral’ was even a word.”
“I had become so race-conscious and so angry that I was looking at everything through the lens of race,” Park said. “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 eventually did return to acting after a “slow climb back into the business.” In the years following his work on “Friends,” Park appeared in “Boy Meets World,” “Law & Order,” “The Venture Bros.” and “Mad About You.”
From Variety US