Jennifer Aniston reveals that she was so overcome with emotion that she had to leave the set of the Friends reunion several times. The classic sitcom began airing on NBC in September 1994 and ran for 10 seasons. It followed the exploits of six best friends as they explored dating, work, and adult life in New York City. Jennifer Aniston's character, Rachel, in addition to giving the world the haircut named after her, is particularly iconic for being one-half of an on-again-off-again couple with David Schwimmer's Ross Geller that rose to the heights of the TV relationship pantheon.
The six leads of Friends are still so beloved for their star-making roles that they all came together for an HBO Max reunion special that aired on May 27, 2021. The special included a detailed recreation of the original set, the cast doing a table read of classic scenes, and an interview hosted by James Corden and packed with special guest stars. The special also featured video messages from famous folks who love the show, including David Beckham, BTS, and Malala Yousafzai.
Speaking with THR about her new projects, including The Morning Show and Murder Mystery 2, Jennifer Aniston got candid about the Friends reunion. She explained how filming the event was harder for her than she thought it was going to be. She said they were "naive walking into it" thinking it was going to be purely fun, not realizing how harrowing it might be to stare your past straight in the face. Remembering where she was in 2004 during the Friends finale and the difficult time she had in her personal life in the years following, she got emotional and "had to walk out at certain points." She says she doesn't "know how they cut around it." Read the full quote below:
I think we were just so naive walking into it, thinking, “How fun is this going to be? They’re putting the sets back together, exactly as they were.” Then you get there and it’s like, “Oh right, I hadn’t thought about what was going on the last time I was actually here.” And it just took me by surprise because it was like, “Hi, past, remember me? Remember how that sucked? You thought everything was in front of you and life was going to be just gorgeous and then you went through maybe the hardest time in your life?” It was all very jarring and, of course, you’ve got cameras everywhere and I’m already a little emotionally accessible, I guess you could say, so I had to walk out at certain points. I don’t know how they cut around it.
It's understandable that the Friends star would have such complicated feelings about the reunion. Her divorce from Brad Pitt was finalized just over a year after the series finale, kicking off a tumultuous period of tabloid attention on her personal life that has continued to loom over her all these years later. Despite her career success, which she acknowledged in the interview that she has absolutely no qualms with, every single second of her love life has been placed under a microscope for decades.
One other thing that is interesting to consider is the difference in perception between the fans and the creators of Friends. Fans adore the sitcom and want to see more and more of it as often as possible. However, for those who worked on the show, it represents a certain moment in their career and in their youth that might be embarrassing or difficult to look back on, like a high school yearbook.
Source: THR