Jennifer Aniston revealed how difficult it was for people to see her not as Rachel Green from ‘Friends’ after the show ended.
Jennifer Aniston, 51, got super candid about her career post Friends in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, June 24. She, along with many other A-list actresses like Reese Witherspoon, Zendaya, Rose Byrne, Helena Bonham Carter and Janelle Monae, took part in a roundtable discussion that talked about a myriad of topics including COVID-19 and how the world has changed since George Floyd‘s death. Something else that the talented women engaged in centered on their desire to be seen differently in the entertainment industry and how difficult that really is.
“You just exhaust yourself,” the Emmy winner revealed. “I mean, I could not get Rachel Green off of my back for the life of me. I could not escape ‘Rachel from Friends’ and it’s on all the time and you’re like, ‘Stop playing that f***ing show! (Laughter.)'” Joking or not, she still finds time to watch the iconic NBC series and gets a kick out of it all these years later.
Jennifer Aniston in her ‘Friends’ days. Credit: REX/Shutterstock
“I love stumbling on a Friends episode”, she told costar Lisa Kudrow, 56, in a separate interview. “This one time I was with Courteney [Cox] and we were trying to find something to reference, an old Friends thing, and then we stumbled on — there’s bloopers online — and we sat there at the computer, like two nerds, watching these bloopers, laughing at ourselves.”
Jennifer later talked about how her 2002 film The Good Girl, where she plays a discount store clerk who strikes up an affair with a stock boy played by Jake Gyllenhaal, was the “first time” she was able to “shed whatever the Rachel character was and to be able to disappear into someone who wasn’t that was such a relief to me.”
“But I remember the panic that set over me, thinking, ‘Oh God, I don’t know if I can do this. Maybe they’re right. Maybe everybody else is seeing something I’m not seeing, which is you are only that girl in the New York apartment with the purple walls,'” she continued. “So, I was almost doing it for myself just to see if I could do something other than that. And it was terrifying because you’re doing it in front of the world.”
Jennifer Aniston and the cast of ‘Friends’. Credit: REX/Shutterstock
Jennifer has no doubt been able to successfully transition away from her time as Rachel since the show ended. She’s earned rave reviews for the Apple TV series The Morning Show which put her back on the awards show circuit earlier this year.
