The highly anticipated HBO Max Friends reunion brought us all so much joy when it aired back in May earlier this year – but it wasn’t a joyous occasion for everyone! In a very candid and heart-breaking interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Jennifer Aniston said that the reunion wasn’t all fun and laughter for her, as it actually forced her to revisit her past and relive some of her hardest times. I.e., her marriage to Brad Pitt, which ended shortly after the show did. And at one point, she said she actually had to walk out of the reunion and insist the cameras stop rolling! Poor Jen!
“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,'” the 52-year-old We’re The Millers actress told THR. If you cast your minds back to the early noughties, you’ll remember that Friends ran from 1994 to 2004, and Jennifer was happily married to Brad Pitt between 2000 and 2005. So we’re not surprised to hear that it brought back those memories for her – memories that she may have worked very hard to try and forget!
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She may not have mentioned Pitt's name in the THR interview, but it's very obvious what, and who, she is referring to! Jen continued: "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 Morning Show actress went on to recall the moment she had to ask the cast and crew to pause the filming, because it all got too much for her. "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," she said. "I had to walk out at certain points. I don't know how they cut around it."
Aniston's response to a question about what she thought her life – personal and professional – would be like after Friends wrapped in 2004 was very interesting. "The career was one thing. I didn't know what was coming, and that's been nothing but blessed. It's a different caliber of work but I love it, no matter what, even if it's a terribly reviewed, dumb comedy, it doesn't matter if it brings me joy," she began, before saying that it was the "personal stuff" that she regarded as "jarring."
She continued: "It was more personal stuff that I 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. 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."
