Tamera Mowry-Housley Says Sister, Sister Was Dropped by ABC Because of Friends

The sitcom Friends was one of the most influential and consequential TV shows of all time. The series, which ran on NBC from 1994 to 2004, gave us six memorable characters, a hit single with the theme song (“I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts) and a movie star and pop culture phenomenon named Jennifer Aniston.

According to Tamera Mowry-Housley, one of the stars of Sister, Sister, which ran on ABC for two seasons, from 1994 to 1995, Friends also helped push the show, which costarred Mowry-Housley’s twin sister Tia, off ABC and onto a new, untested network called the WB, where it aired from 1995 to 1999.

Mowry-Housley, 47, digs into the network trajectory of Sister, Sister and how it was affected by the success of Friends in the new two-part HBO documentary Seen & Heard, which premiered Sept. 9. The documentary, executive produced by Issa Rae, charts the past, present and future of Black talent on television, and airs over two nights: The first episode, “Seen,” debuted on HBO Sept. 9 and the second episode, “Heard,” drops tonight at 9 p.m.

“I remember us just killing it in the ratings and then having all that taken away,” Mowry-Housley says of Sister Sister, which ranked at a very respectable No. 33 in the Nielsen ratings during its first season on ABC. “The president of the network, I can remember calling him saying, ‘How come we were canceled? What happened?’ ”

So what did happen?

“And I can remember Friends came about, and a lot of the networks wanted to, they were like, ‘Wow, this show is a hit. How can we bring that to our network?’ ” Mowry-Housley explains. “So we go from being on ABC to the WB. I remember my sister and I going, ‘What the hell? What is that? What is the frog network?’ A fledgeling network? I remember looking that up, going, what does ‘fledgeling’ even mean.”

Sister, Sister was one of a handful of flagships series in the early years of the WB alongside other Black-fronted comedies like The Wayan Bros. and The Jamie Foxx Show. By the latter part of the ’90s, shows with predominantly White casts, including 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek, had overtaken the network and dominated its presence in the media

“I have a frame from the WB saying, ‘Thank you for helping us start a network.’ And [her Sister, Sister dad] Tim Reid was telling me, ‘Tamera, a lot of networks do this.’ They start off with Black shows, because we’re talented. Black people are talented, and a lot of people watch Black shows, and they built that network with those shows, and then they start changing.”

A number of Black VIPs, including Oprah Winfrey, Tracee Ellis Ross, Debbie Allen, Shonda Rhimes, Tyler Perry and Rae herself appear over the course of both episodes of Seen & Heard, discussing their careers and the challenges they’ve faced in their personal and professional journeys.

“Overcoming is a journey,” actress, director and choreographer Allen says in the documentary. “It’s not a destination.”

Seen & Heard premiered on HBO Sept. 9. The second episode airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET.