Jennifer Aniston has recently talked about heavy emotions she experienced filming Friends: The Reunion. The 52-year-old actress explained the nostalgia she felt reuniting with castmates Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer on a replica set of the 1990s hit built for the reunion, which aired this past May on HBO Max.
Aniston, who played Rachel Green on the series said, “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.” She continued, “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?'”
The perennial A-lister said the experience ‘was all very jarring’ and that she had to take a few breaks. “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,” she said while adding, “Time travel is hard.”
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The Morning Show star also noted how the source of her emotions was ‘more personal stuff that she had expectations about that sort of shape-shifted, so to speak. “That was what was jarring, that we all had an idea of what the future was going to be and we were going to go hunker down and focus on this or that, and then it all just changed overnight, and that was it,” she said. “But again, everything’s a blessing if you’re able to look at life’s ups and downs in that way. And if it all hadn’t happened, I would not be sitting here the woman that I am.”
Meanwhile, in the chat, Aniston also spoke about a meeting she had with Lorne Michaels about joining Saturday Night Live, prior to her stint on Friends. “I was so young and dumb and I went into Lorne’s office and I was like, ‘I hear women are not respected on this show.’ I don’t remember exactly what I said next, but it was something like, I would prefer if it were like the days of Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin.”