“If you're not over here
in 15 minutes you can find
a new best friend.” “You’re my person.” Always a best friend,
never a protagonist. So often the onscreen BFF
seems to be there solely to support or add dimension to the person
we’re really supposed to care about. If we look at the best friend
character type in cinema and TV, some patterns emerge:
They’re a token. "Is being the gay best friend
still a thing?" While the story’s hero
tends to be white, straight, and conventionally attractive,
the best friend might more often be a person of color, LGBTQ, or belong
to another marginalized community. “So you wanna look like
the black best friend in the white girl movie?” Freed from the
narrow expectations usually imposed
on hero characters, the best friend
may get to have a more colorful personality
than the lead. They can be found
offering comic relief or spicing up their bestie’s life
with witty remarks. “Imagine being blind
and not being able to see a beautiful day
like today. Can you think
of anything worse?” “Stone washed jeans
with a matching jacket.” They’re often a
pretty amazing friend -- the kind most of us
can only dream of. “I can’t carry it for you. But I can carry you!” Whether they’re dispensing
sage inspirational advice “Of course your first draft
is gonna be bad. It's gonna
be terrible. Then you know
what you do, Harper? You go back
and you make it better” smoothly assisting
in the hero’s personal life “What the hell?” “Yeah, I snuck an
Al Green song in there. I want them
to get together.” or turning up
at the drop of a hat to offer
a sympathetic ear “You can't plan
your sister's wedding to the man you love. It's sick.” this person’s first priority
is apparently ensuring their friend lives
a fully actualized life. Ultimately, what defines
the best friend is that they’re not
the focus of the story. They’re there to facilitate
someone else’s journey -- even when they seem to be
just as compelling as the lead. “It's just that when
I look in the mirror, I see someone
who's beautiful and talented and always
the second one you think of.” So why is it that
so many stories choose to sideline
the best friend? And in relegating
them to the wings, which traits does
the story implicitly deem inferior to the
protagonist’s qualities? Here’s our take on
the Best Friend onscreen and why when it
comes to friendship, the spotlight should be
big enough for two. “It’s friendship, friendship,
just a perfect blendship!” “You’re watching the Take. Thanks for watching and be sure to
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on creative projects today! The essence of the best friend type
is that they’re supportive. This is a quality we all look for
in our nearest and dearest. But on screen, a character
who’s just supportive can end up propping up
the lead’s characterization without having
much else to do. “You know what
the best part of my day is? For about ten seconds,
from when I pull up to the curb and when I get
to your door. Cause I think maybe
I'll get up there and I'll knock on the door…
and you won't be there.” The best-friend-as-stock character
has long been a fixture of rom coms. In this context they tend to be
a combination of cheerleader... and life coach, who tries to push
the main character towards happiness. “We are going to Jamaica,
Miss Thing, and I don't wanna hear you
tell me why you can't go, OK?” Becky in Sleepless in Seattle
sets the central romance in motion by mailing Annie’s letter to Sam
“So I mailed your letter.” and then sending her
to Seattle to meet him. Patti in Under the Tuscan Sun
encourages Frances to take the ticket to Italy
that Patti had originally bought for herself,
urging Frances to use this opportunity
to reignite her life. “You could use it as
a time to start writing.” “I'm busy. I have to review
all those books, Patti.” “Instead of working
on your own book.” Judy Greer has made a career
of playing the best friend -- in movies like
The Wedding Planner, 13 Going on 30
and 27 Dresses. “What is it about you that cries
‘best friend,’ do you think?” “I seem like someone
that would have no other life besides boosting the
ego of someone who is slightly more attractive
than me but less funny?” She even poked fun
at this typecasting in a 2014
Funny or Die sketch. “I don’t really have
a lot going on… except being
Sarah’s best friend.” There’s a bitter irony
at the end of the skit when she meets
a potential love interest and opts to set him up
with her friend instead. “For a second
I thought that you were going to see
if we should go out.” underscoring the absurdity
of this character type who is selfless to the point
of overlooking her own happiness. Meanwhile, because
the main character is almost always
a white, straight, thin person, making the best friend
one of few black, gay, or fat characters
can feel like tokenism. Oh, and don't even
get me started about the cliché
gay best friend whose sole purpose
in the story is just to help
the main hot chick. Like, what's going
on in his life? Sometimes this plays
on stereotypes -- “I've always wanted
an S.B.F.” “An S.B.F.? “Sassy black friend.” On Sex and the City,
Charlotte’s and Carrie’s respective “gay best friends”,
Anthony and Stanford, are mostly there
to dispense relationship advice and make quips,
with Anthony in particular living up to the idea
of the “sassy gay friend”. “I want nothing but lilies
on the chuppah. The theme
is Yentl Chic.” In the series,
the two men hate each other. “God, I hate him” But in Sex and the City 2,
they’re paired up -- undermining their evident
mutual dislike with the lazy device that the two gay people in a story
must make sense as a couple. "Her best gay friend
is marrying my best gay friend!" Dave Chapelle played
the best friend role in 1998’s You’ve Got Mail, serving as
a fun sounding board for Tom Hanks “She could be a real dog.” And he turns up again
to play the supportive friend to Bradley Cooper’s Jack
in 2018’s A Star is Born, helping Jack recover
from a drinking binge. “I feel like we’ve
done this before” In both movies
he encapsulates how the best friend
seems like they’d be cool and fun if you got
more time with them, but within this story exists entirely
in relation to the protagonist. Ultimately, even if the best friend
is a lot more than the sidekick, automatically putting actors
who fit categories of “otherness” into the supporting role sends
the damaging message that being gay, fat,
or non-white is niche and wouldn’t have
broad appeal. Another way that
the best friend can service the
main character’s story is symbolically - by representing
an aspect of their psyche. In Sex and the City,
you could read Carrie’s three best friends
each as embodying a different aspect of
the archetypal woman searching for love --
Miranda is the brain. “Just give me a call when
you’re ready to talk about something besides
men for a change.” Charlotte is the heart. “My good friend Charlotte,
the eternal optimist, who always
believes in love.” and Samantha
is the “sex drive”. “I'm a try-sexual. I'll try anything once” Another version of the best friend
that’s used symbolically is the “childhood friend,”
who reflects what the featured character
used to be like. “Why don’t you go ahead
and go home. I’ll just... I’ll get a ride
or something” Ultimately, the problem
with the stock best friend is that their one true purpose
is to add definition, complexity or color to the main character. Even stories that seem to present a well-rounded vision
of friendship and give more focus to the best friend
can still be guilty of this. Leslie and Ann
on Parks and Recreation are routinely painted
as #BFFgoals. “Hoes before bros. Ovaries before brovaries. Uteruses before duderuses” and we might think
Ann gets her due, given how often Leslie
heaps praise on her friend. “Ann, you beautiful tropical fish.” -- but we never really
get the chance to understand what’s so great about Ann. Instead, Leslie’s adoration serves to show the viewers what
a loving, sunshine-y person she is, as if it’s the way
she sees Ann -- rather than Ann herself
-- that is truly special. “You've resuscitated
a human heart in your bare hands.” “No, I haven't.” “You haven't?” “No.” “You will. You're that good of a nurse” If we look to literature,
we can find precursors of the best friend trope
who’ve been getting the short end
of the stick for centuries. Devilishly clever
and charismatic Mercutio, Romeo’s bestie
in Romeo and Juliet, is the realist
to Romeo’s dreamer. “True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing
but vain fantasy.” He’s also deeply loyal
to his friend -- a quality that ends up
costing him his life and making him depart this world
in total disillusionment: “A plague on both your houses.” Hamlet’s equally loyal friend
Horatio considers dying rather than living
in a world without Hamlet. “Here’s yet some liquor left.” But in the end, he stays alive
to tell his best friend’s story. “Absent thee from felicity a while,
and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
to tell my story.” In Pride and Prejudice,
while Elizabeth Bennet lives a great love story
with Mr. Darcy, her best friend Charlotte
gets a much more realistic fate for women of their time:
settling for a silly, self-important man
she doesn’t respect. Here the best friend’s lesser lot
is made very explicit: Lizzy herself has already
rejected Mr Collins -- “You could not make me happy
and I am convinced I am the last woman in the world
who could make you so.” and she judges her friend
for accepting his proposal. "Do you think it
incredible that Mr. Collins should be able to procure
any woman's good opinion, because he was not so happy
as to succeed with you?" But like Mercutio,
Charlotte is more practical than her story’s protagonist. “I’m not romantic you know,
I never was. I ask only a comfortable home” So why do all these prototypes for
today’s Best Friends get a raw deal? Part of the problem is that
the main character often isn’t nearly as good a friend
back to their devoted sidekick. “They got me walking
around here like I’m--” “Listen to this lie about me.” “Okay, I’ll finish my thought later.” When we do
get a glimpse of what’s going on
inside the best friend, it becomes clear
that the best friend has their own
deep inner life which the main character
is totally oblivious to. “You don't understand
what this feels like. You've never…” “Lost the love of my life? Wrong. Paolo. Brazilian. Broke my heart. ” But the main problem
is that the narrative itself short shrifts
this character. “Why does this always
happen to me?” The best friend just doesn’t get
the hero’s epic, victorious arc. “'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything
to have what you got. So would any
of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if
you're still here in 20 years” Delilah in
How Stella Got Her Groove Back encourages Stella to
embrace life with open arms, while she herself
is dying. “Who's gonna be my best friend
now is what I want to know.” They also don’t get much
opportunity for character growth. In 10 Things I Hate About You,
Bianca and her friend Chastity both start out as
superficial airheads -- “l know you can be overwhelmed,
and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be ‘whelmed’?” “I think you can in Europe.” but only Bianca matures
into a better person. “He’s all yours.” “Very generous, princess. And just so you know,
Joey only liked you for one reason. He even had a bet
going with his friends.” Often the static best friend is
implied to just not want more -- to not have the vision that
drives the featured character. “No lunch. I got speech class.” “What'ya need speech class for? You talk fine.” Still, in some cases,
it feels like the best friend could have been
a great protagonist. Take Cameron in
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Even though the movie’s title
and direct-to-camera narration tells us this is Ferris’ story,
it’s Cameron who undergoes a dramatic arc of change --
becoming something of a back-door protagonist. “l want it. l'm gonna take it. That's it. When Morris comes home,
he and l'll just have a little chat.” Grey’s Anatomy fan favorite Cristina
has long been considered the show’s best character
for her confidence, no-bullshit attitude,
and unapologetic ambition. “Pretty good is not enough,
I want to be great.” While this isn’t Yang’s Anatomy,
on some level Cristina represents the true soul of the series. For all her dark twisty-ness, the protagonist Meredith still takes
a fairly conventional path as she meets her soulmate
and eventually settles into marriage and motherhood. But show creator Shonda Rhimes said that she let Cristina
whom she based on herself, quote, “do and think and live
in ways that voiced my dreams. She did not want to get married. She had a genius that she chased. She loved her work. I gave her a strident desire to not have children
because while I adore children, I wanted to watch her fight
that feminist battle and win”. “I really, really, really
don't want to be a mother. I want to be a surgeon,
and please...get it.” So sometimes,
not bearing the responsibility of being a traditional protagonist
can liberate a best friend character to take a more interesting,
less traveled road. Bojack Horseman’s Diane
is also the soul of her series, reflecting the attitudes
of the show’s writers in her competing love for
and disappointment in Bojack. As Bojack’s moral compass “I need you to tell me
I’m a good person” she shows that one mark
of a great best friend character is the way they
challenge the main character to be better
than they are. "You need to take
responsibility for yourself." But Diane is her own person
with a separate destiny from Bojack, and in the end the show
underlines that, in real life, best friends aren’t just
permanently hanging around to be there for
you no matter what. “Wouldn’t it be funny
if tonight was the last time we ever talked
to each other?” On Dear White People,
while Sam is set up as the star, her friend Joelle
is not only charismatic, fun, well-adjusted and smart,
but she’s also pre-med, was her high school's valedictorian,
and happens to be a beautiful singer. “Joelle Brooks isn’t used
to being second string.” Still, unlike the other
major characters she doesn’t get her own
point-of-view episode until the second season,
just as (in her world) Joelle feels overlooked
by her peers in favor of the flashier,
outspoken Sam. “It looks like I went missing
but my parents tried to save money with discount ad space." “Why is her picture so small?” Eventually, though,
Dear White People itself comes to recognize
Joelle’s awesomeness. “You make things better just by
being around, you know that?” as she goes from being
on the sidelines and pining for Reggie while
he’s hung up on Sam in Season 1, to co-hosting the
titular radio show and winning her crush’s heart
in season two. In recent years we’ve started to see
a shift in onscreen entertainment toward putting former best-friend
types front and center. In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,
it’s the Korean-American Lara Jean who’s the protagonist, while
her white, blonde best friend Chris is placed firmly in
supporting role territory. The DUFF’s lead Bianca
is viewed by her peers as the token ugly friend
to her two beautiful besties. “People ask you questions
about them, right, because that's your job
as their DUFF.” “Sorry, as their what?” “D-U-F-F. Designated Ugly Fat Friend.” And more best friends
are stepping up to claim agency
and personhood, like when Booksmart’s Amy rebels
against Molly’s controlling tendency to cast her
as the sidekick "You force me to do
whatever you want to do!" "What does that even mean?" "You decide what we do
and when we do it!". Part of what makes the
one-dimensional stock best friend a missed opportunity
is that friendship naturally makes for rich,
complex story material -- and having a best friend
is one of the greatest joys of life. “You are my actual
rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue
and black writing utensils.” This is the appeal of Friends,
which features six main characters who are the most
important people in each other’s twenty-
and thirty-something lives. “Boyfriends and girlfriends come
and go, but this is for life!” The show capitalizes on
our collective wish fulfilment through the group's profound
closeness and fun times together. This level of friendship is something
many of us long for, whether because we've never
experienced it, or because we've lost it to time
and the demands of adult life. “The friends, neighbors,
drinking buddies, and partners in crime you love
so much when you’re young, as the years go by,
you just lose touch.” While our society
doesn’t tend to place enough concrete
value on friendship “That's the thing about friendship. It's a lot rarer than love. Because there's nothing
in it for anybody.” in actuality few things
are as essential to our happiness
and wellbeing. This is played up in Bridesmaids,
where the love object that the women compete over
is a platonic best friend. “You are my angel
and soulmate.” -- suggesting that this
kind of relationship is perhaps even more precious
than a romantic mate. Bromances too are
extremely important. “I love you. Why don't we say
that every day? Why can't we say
it more often?” specially because men traditionally
maintain fewer friendships than women. “So what do I do? How do I make friends?” “If you see a cool looking guy,
strike up a conversation and ask him
on a man date.” Good friendship stories have the
same nuance and gravity as romances. “But if I'm wrong
and it is a huge mistake, I need to know
you'll be there for me.” “I'm there.” This is no doubt part
of the phenomenal success of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels,
which focus on the fascinating, complicated lifelong bond
between two Italian women. "What you do, I do." The best friendship stories
out there are successful because they center
the friends equally. rather than framing the narrative
as one person’s journey with their pal in the background
cheering them on. It follows that
the root of many friendship fallouts is
a feeling of inequality. “You think we only talk
about my problems? Why do you think that?” “Because we do.” “That's not true, Marnie. We only talk about your problems” For any relationship to be healthy,
it can’t be polluted by feelings of jealousy, superiority,
or an uneven power dynamic. “I… looked up to Naomi
pretty much my entire life, which meant she was
looking down on me.” Of course, it’s natural to sometimes
resent a more powerful friend when the world is casting
us as their invisible sidekick. Kelly Rowland
felt this with her former Destiny’s Child
bandmate, Beyoncé. a dynamic she explored
in the single “Dirty Laundry. “This world is not
kind to the Kellys.” But we can take
encouragement from Beyoncé’s loving response
to her friend’s song. “she said how proud she was of me,
and then said ‘I never left’” Perhaps the most aspirational
real life friendship in our culture is that of Oprah Winfrey
and Gayle King, who met in
their early twenties while working
at a Baltimore TV station and are still bound at the hip
more than forty years later. “She is the sister
everybody would want. She is the friend that
everybody deserves.” Winfrey said in 2019,
“Now that Gayle’s a shining star on CBS This Morning,
people often ask her how she felt being in
the shadow of my success. The truth is, she always felt
not a shadow, but the light. We couldn’t have remained friends
if she’d perceived it as a shadow.” “She’s as happy for my success
as I am. Actually, happier.” Recent onscreen stories
also highlight friends who find joy in
lifting each other up. “You are the strongest,
coolest, smartest, most stunningly
gorgeous creature this high school
and this Earth has ever seen.” So it emerges that the secret
to sustaining a forever friendship is not to view it,
as Hollywood so often dictates, through the cinematic lens
of protagonist and supporting role. We all see ourselves as the
main characters of our own lives -- and there’s room
in the frame for us and our friends to stand
shoulder to shoulder, equally bright,
reflecting each other’s glow. “Who allowed you
to be this beautiful?” “Who allowed you
to be this beautiful?” “Who allowed you
to take my breath away?” If you're new here
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