Zoe Kravitz Just Dragged Friends And Fans Are Losing It

Zoe Kravitz just poked the Friends bear. While talking 1990s nostalgia with Austin Butler to promote Darren Aronofsky's new movie Caught Stealing, she called the hit NBC sitcom outdated in one very specific way.

The good vibes of the '90s... up to a point

The conversation, in People Magazine, starts out like a love letter to the decade. Butler lights up describing their film's apartment set with a Nintendo 64 perched on the TV and a copy of GoldenEye ready to go. He says he even misses not having a cellphone.

Kravitz is right there with him: the old Nokia brick, the whole pre-smartphone pace of life, the fashion, New York City grunge. In her words, it was simply a good time.

...and the part they would leave in the past

Asked what she does not miss from that era, Kravitz does not hesitate: mainstream TV's lazy homophobia, and yes, she means shows as big as Friends.

'Super homophobic jokes on mainstream television. If you watch Friends now, you're like, 'Whoa, that's...'

'Oh, so much in Friends. Like, things that aren't punchlines are punchlines. It's wild. So maybe that? We can keep that there.'

Butler sounds surprised at first — as in, even Friends? — but ends up agreeing: keep that in the '90s.

The larger backdrop

This is not a brand-new critique. Friends has been dinged for years for jokes and storylines that have not aged well, particularly around LGBTQ topics and representation. It was celebrated as progressive in its time and still lands differently now — both things can be true. Kravitz is basically saying: enjoy the nostalgia, but we do not need to bring back everything.

Where this is all coming from

Kravitz and Butler are co-starring in Caught Stealing, Aronofsky's crime thriller set squarely in the '90s, which explains all the memory-lane talk. The movie is currently playing in theaters across the United States.