While just about everyone on the planet seemed to love HBO Max’s Friends reunion special that hit the streaming service this past May (well, except Paul Rudd fans), for some the stroll down memory lane was a bit more emotional than they were anticipating. However, perhaps no one was quite as emotionally sapped by the experience as the woman behind fashion icon Rachel Green herself, Jennifer Aniston.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Aniston told the outlet the reunion special was much harder than she anticipated, going so far as to call it emotionally “jarring.” According to Aniston, while her and the rest of her Friends’ co-stars went in to the experience thinking it would be fun, it didn’t take long for her to be brutally reminded of how much leaving the show — and the uncertainty that awaited her — “sucked.” The Emmy-winning actress went on to admit that the experience was so emotional, she even had to walk off the set at certain points.
“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,’” Aniston started. “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.”
However — and despite of all the emotional baggage being on set came with — Aniston said being reunited with her former found family was “so much fun,” and brought back the same sense of unity the cast felt back when they were standing side-by-side with one another while famously renegotiating their contracts. She also addressed how she felt about her career post-Friends, as well as the big question of if she’ll ever write a memoir about the experience, to which she responded it “doesn’t appeal to me, really.” You can read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter, and catch the actress on the Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes special that hit Hulu earlier today.