10 TV stars who said their classic shows couldn't be made today
10 TV stars who said their classic shows couldn't be made today
Britt HayesWed, June 17, 2026 at 9:21 PM UTC
0
Rainn Wilson in 'The Office'; Jennifer Aniston for 'Friends'; Jerry Seinfeld in 'Seinfeld'
Could The Office get made today? Rainn Wilson doesn't think so.
It's true that certain classic TV shows probably would be made a little differently in the modern era, if they got made at all. Take The Honeymooners, the '50s sitcom in which Ralph (Jackie Gleason) made a recurring bit out of threatening to hit his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows), a joke that wouldn't fly today. Or even The Jerry Springer Show, in which the eponymous host invited average people on to make a spectacle out of their interpersonal conflicts, ranging from infidelity to outright racism, and often involving physical fights. (The extent to which those fights were real or staged remains debatable.)
Every once in a while, an actor will claim that their TV show would never get made today, either because culture has gotten "too woke" (i.e., socially aware) or the content is simply too disturbing for modern sensibilities. While some of those actors might have a point, others seem disconnected from reality.
Below, we're taking a look at 10 actors who think their classic TV shows wouldn't make it to air by today's standards.
01 of 09
Rainn Wilson, The Office
Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute on 'The Office'Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC
"I do feel like you couldn't make The Office today. I think that would be too hard to be as politically incorrect as the show was," Rainn Wilson recently told Fox News. "I think there has been a bias in the media, towards more, what we call, liberal policies."
Specifically, Wilson cites Steve Carell's character, office manager Michael Scott, whose confident ignorance was often central to the show's humor — as was his employees' exasperated reactions to his behavior. "We milked that for a lot of great, really inappropriate stuff," Wilson said. "But even with the fact that painting that character as just an idiot, I don't think you could get away with it today."
The Office, which satirized workplace culture by heightening the typical personalities and relationships you might encounter in an everyday office, is exactly the kind of show that NBC and other networks would still greenlight. In fact, just this past year, NBC and Peacock released The Paper, a spinoff of The Office. Season 2 is already on the way.
Does Wilson think viewers are too simple-minded to understand that The Office was making Michael the butt of the joke?
02 of 09
Mindy Kaling, The Office
Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor on 'The Office'Credit: Ron Tom/NBC/Getty
Wilson's costar and series writer Mindy Kaling agrees, though her reasoning is a little different. "That show is so inappropriate now," Kaling said of The Officein 2022. "The writers who I'm still in touch with now, we always talk about how so much of that show we probably couldn't make now. Tastes have changed, and honestly what offends people has changed so much now."
But are things really that different? If we exclusively look at network TV and not cable, which has fewer content limitations, there are still some sitcoms that wouldn't be out of place on a scheduling lineup with The Office. There's the aforementioned spinoff — which aired on NBC after debuting on Peacock — and The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, the great new comedy in which Tracy Morgan plays a buffoon who isn't that dissimilar from Michael Scott.
It seems outlandish to call The Office "inappropriate." Perhaps the way the fictional characters behave is inappropriate, but that's what made the show so funny.
03 of 09
Jeremy Piven, Entourage
Jeremy Piven as Ari Gold on 'Entourage'Credit: Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection
HBO's Entourage, which aired from 2004 to 2011, simultaneously satirized and indulged Hollywood stereotypes. The latter is what made the hit series either off-putting or brilliant, depending on who you ask. Across eight seasons (and a movie) Jeremy Piven played Ari Gold, an arrogant, abrasive, and extremely insensitive Hollywood agent based on executive producer Mark Wahlberg's real-life agent, Ari Emanuel.
"That character, I knew from the jump, would be a very interesting anomaly in the way that you thought he was a pig, but he was monogamous," Piven told US Weeklyin 2024. "He was abrasive and was he a racist? No, no, no. He's a motivator, and he's an equal opportunity offender."
"I make a lot of jokes on why Entourage couldn't exist in today's climate," said Piven, "and that's unfortunate because the reality is, people just want [to] laugh. They want to laugh so badly."
Giving Piven the benefit the doubt, it's possible that when he made that statement he hadn't seen Entourage's tech-centric successor, Silicon Valley, or Succession, a dark comedy largely comprised of characters whose opinions and behaviors make Ari Gold look like Ms. Rachel.
04 of 09
Jennifer Aniston, Friends
Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green on 'Friends'Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
There are few sitcoms that remain as beloved as Friends, the hit NBC series that ran for 10 seasons between 1994 and 2004, and followed the lives and relationships of six pals, played by Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, and Jennifer Aniston.
Like the cast itself, the popularity of Friends has endured in the streaming era, but according to Aniston, modern audiences are more critical of the series. "There's a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive," Aniston said in 2023. "There were things that were never intentional and others... well, we should have thought it through, but I don't think there was a sensitivity like there is now."
While largely inoffensive, Friends was never without fault. The sitcom has been criticized over the years for starring an all-white cast despite being set in New York City, and for plotlines that were homophobic and fatphobic. These criticisms aren't new, however, and were being discussed when Friends was still on the air. It wasn't until season 7 that the show featured its first Black love interest (played by Gabrielle Union). When Aisha Tyler joined the series in season 9 as the first Black character with a recurring role, she knew it was a big deal.
"As an actor, that was the biggest show on TV at the time, so it was a milestone," Tyler told InStyle in 2018. "I think it was a pivotal moment for the show in regards to race, in terms of having a character of color that had some durability, and stuck around a while."
05 of 09
Advertisement
Simon Bird, The Inbetweeners
Simon Bird as Will McKenzie on 'The Inbetweeners'Credit: Bwark Productions
Across the pond, The Inbetweeners star Simon Bird thinks the hit UK sitcom wouldn't get greenlit if it were made now. The series, which aired from 2008 to 2010, centers on a group of misfit teen boys navigating high school.
"I honestly think it wouldn't be commissioned today," Bird told theTelegraph in 2023, citing the show's sexist humor and "casual homophobia."
"I rationalise it to myself by saying that at the time it was an accurate representation of the way teenagers talk to each other," he continued. "Is that still the case now? I assume not." It's certainly true that casual homophobia and gay panic were frequently played for comedic effect in the late '90s and early '00s, particularly in shows and movies about young men. And while those depictions may have been more accurate at the time, the emphasis often felt misplaced. Rather than making a mockery of the characters' ignorance, The Inbetweeners treated their homophobia as commonly accepted behavior.
06 of 09
Alison Arngrim and Dean Butler, Little House on the Prairie
Steve Tracy, Alison Arngrim, Melissa Gilbert, and Dean Butler on 'Little House on the Prairie'Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/getty
On the surface, Little House on the Prairie is one of the most inoffensive and wholesome shows of all time. The western drama, which ran from 1974 to 1983, follows the Ingalls family's life on a Minnesota farm in the late 19th century, and features the kind of drama you'd encounter on The Oregon Trail: droughts, disease, inclement weather, and the occasional feud with neighbors. But it was also known for confronting social issues like racism and disability.
Every once in a while, Little House on the Prairie would deliver an unexpectedly dark episode, like season 6's "The Return of Mr. Edwards," in which the recurring character played by Victor French loses the inability to walk after a logging accident and becomes suicidal. Stars Alison Arngrim and Dean Butler recently revisited the harrowing episode on their rewatch podcast, with Arngrim recalling how the character becomes "nearly unrecognizable to the people who love him" and acts "scary" toward his wife and daughter.
Arngrim thinks if the episode aired today, "there'd be warnings at every commercial break" about the "unsettling, upsetting material," adding that the scenes in which Edwards attempts suicide are "mind-blowing" to see now, especially for a family show that aired on primetime network TV.
The actress also noted that "The Return of Mr. Edwards" was directed by series star Michael Landon, who "faced issues head-on." Landon's episodes were often the darkest in the series — and the most deranged, if you recall "Sylvia."
But would Little House on the Prairie's most unsettling episodes get made today? We'll find out when the reboot debuts on Netflix.
07 of 09
Edie Falco, The Sopranos
Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano and James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on 'The Sopranos'Credit: Hbo/Kobal/Shutterstock
The Sopranos is frequently credited for kicking off the Golden Age of television and the prestige TV boom, which inspired countless dramas centered on deeply flawed male protagonists — a trend that continues to this day. The series, which debuted in 1999 and ran for 6 seasons, follows Tony Soprano (the late James Gandolfini) as he struggles to balance the demands of his crime family with the needs of his real family.
According to Edie Falco, who played Tony's wife, Carmela, the industry is too concerned with "appropriateness" now to make something like The Sopranos, which often depicted violence and sex explicitly (and sometimes simultaneously). Speaking with TIME magazine in 2024, Falco said that she doubts the sex scenes would have felt as authentic with the involvement of an intimacy coordinator, a position that wasn't commonplace on sets at the time. When choreographing a scene that closely, Falco said, "you're leaving out the possibility of last-minuteness." Fans of Heated Rivalry would disagree.
Creator David Chase has a much more accurate read on why The Sopranos probably wouldn't get made today. In the same interview, Chase told TIME that modern TV development is "really all about money," adding, "All these corporations spent billions of dollars chasing after Netflix. And now they're broke. So everything they produce, they want to do on the cheap."
08 of 09
Maury Povich, Maury
Maury Povich in 1991 hosting 'The Maury Povich Show'Credit: Courtesy Everett
Before daytime talk shows entered their endangered species era, they were among the biggest draws on TV. In the '90s, we had The Jerry Springer Show, the Maury show, The Montel Williams Show, Ricki Lake, Leeza, and many other shows headlined by their eponymous hosts, all of them jockeying to out-sensationalize each other.
Maury Povich became the enduring king of the daytime talk show, outlasting his peers until his show finally ended in 2022. Over three decades, Povich became a genre unto himself with typical episodes devoted to "out-of-control" teen girls, people with extreme phobias, and — his most prolific topic — paternity tests. "I couldn't do that show today," Povich says in the ABC documentary Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV. "There's no way."
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
In the docuseries, Maury producer Anthony Freire recalls the "unscrupulous things" daytime TV producers would do to compete with one another for ratings. "It was a Sally guest. And it was a woman who had cut out her own breast implants," says Freire. "A producer from Maury whisked her away into our studios and kind of pushed her on the set, and there she was talking to Maury."
When it comes to Maury, the question isn't whether it could get made today, but whether it should.
09 of 09
Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld as Jerry on 'Seinfeld'Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
Complaining that Seinfeld couldn't get made today is the kind of thing that the fictional Jerry Seinfeld would do, so at least the real-life Jerry Seinfeld is staying true to his pedantic on-screen persona. Co-created by Seinfeld and Larry David, the sitcom was a massive hit in the '90s thanks to its wry dissection of social norms, and the talents of costars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards.
According to Seinfeld, the sitcom couldn't be made in today's climate, which is apparently experiencing a comedy drought. "Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don't get it," Seinfeld told The New Yorker in 2024, explaining that "most people" like to go home at the end of the day and put on a good comedy. "You just expected, there'll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people."
Given that David went on to create and star in the long-running Curb Your Enthusiasm, which took a similar approach to exploring absurd human interactions via his own pedantic protagonist, Seinfeld's claim seems disingenuous. To that end, the comedian says, "Larry was grandfathered in," adding, "He's old enough so that — 'I don't have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.'"
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
