Jennifer Aniston has insisted she “wouldn’t change” any of last year’s Friends reunion, despite finding parts of the experience “creepy” and “heavier” than expected.
Since coming together with her five co-stars for a one-off special in 2021, Jen has spoken out about how she found the emotional side of the filming process more difficult than anticipated.
In a new interview with Sebastian Stan for Variety’s Actors On Actors series, the Rachel Green star was once again asked how she found the reunion, admitting the cast went into the special a little naïve to how tough they’d find it.
“I don’t know we expected for it to sucker punch us as hard as it did in the emotional gut,” she said.
“We just had the idea this is going to be so fun – we’re going back to the sets exactly the way they were. And literally, every single nook on a shelf was the same. It was so creepy.”
Jen continued: “It was ’04 when [Friends] ended. And we were different. We were so little. Our lives were ahead of us. And so much has changed.
“We kind of had rose-coloured glasses going into [the reunion]. And then, it was like, ‘This is really a lot heavier than I thought’. But I wouldn’t change a lick of it.”
“Every time we all get together, it’s just like no time has passed,” she added. “We basically grew up together, and taught each other a lot.
“We’re each other’s fall guy because the world was happening. We were exploding, and that kind of notoriety was sudden. And we were in these four walls doing the show, and this insanity is happening.
“And thank God we had each other, because we really couldn’t talk about it outside. It was before social media, so we still had some sanity.”
Months after the Friends reunion special aired, Jennifer revealed she’d actually walked off set several times during recording.
She said: “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.
“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.”