Jennifer Aniston starred in the hit sitcom Friends for a decade before the show’s final episode. And although she had fond memories of the series, in the end she was ready for it to be over.
Jennifer Aniston was both terrified and excited about life after ‘Friends’
Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry | Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images
Aniston’s portrayal as Rachel Green helped make her a household name and amass a fortune. But she admitted that getting the role wasn’t without its drawbacks. After playing Rachel for so long, many found it difficult to see Aniston in a project that wasn’t comedy. The Good Girl helped change that perception a little bit. The 2002 feature allowed Aniston to show off her dramatic chops, which surprised quite a few at the time.
“The weird thing about The Good Girl was that suddenly all these people were like, ‘Wow, look what you can do,’” Aniston once told W. “Like I’ve been doing s***ty work for the last nine years or something. Suddenly they’re like, ‘Hey, she’s really an actress,’ as if I were just some bulls*** comedienne before.”
Aniston’s agent at the time, Kevin Huane, sung his client’s praises, and was excited she got to show another side of herself.
“People who do comedy are always underrated because they make it look so easy,” he said. “So it was exciting to see Jen challenge herself with a film like The Good Girl—which is pretty much the antithesis of Friends—and get the sort of recognition she deserves. I don’t think there’s any limit to what she can do.”
Aniston looked forward to doing more projects like The Good Girl after her Friends run. And as proud as she was of her sitcom, she was equally part ways with Rachel Green.
“I mean, I’m completely terrified about Friends coming to an end, but I’m also dying for it to end, you know?” she said.
Jennifer Aniston had to audition against her own friends to end up on the hit show
Ironically, Aniston found herself competing with her own friends in the business to be on Friends. Losing out to one of her buddies would’ve been particualrly heartbreaking for the actor at the time. She fell for the project the moment she laid eyes on the script, which had everything she didn’t know she was looking for.
“It was called Friends Like Us, at the time,” Aniston once told Collider. “I was doing [another show]. We had only done six episodes and the network didn’t think it was going to get picked up, so I went on auditions for second position, as they call it. I read the script, and I had never had a reaction like that to a show. It was my contemporaries, it was in New York City, it was funny, it was interesting, and I had never read anything like it. This guy named David Schwimmer was already cast, and Courteney Cox was already cast.”
The show she was on ended up being canceled prematurely after all, freeing Aniston to do her hit sitcom. But worry crept in when she realized her competition was very close to home. It turned out that the studio behind Friends had back-up plans in case Aniston’s show wasn’t canceled.
“So, there was a period where I had to stand out the group photographs,” she continued. “I had phone calls from girlfriends saying, ‘I’m auditioning for your part in Friends. Do you have any ideas?’ I was actually surprised that they were considering replacing me. But then, thank god, they didn’t find anyone. They just took the chance that [the other show] would fail after the two episodes that they had picked it up for. I just did this back and forth with Sony and Warner Bros. for two weeks, and then it went away, poof, and Friends went great. I had 10 years of the best schooling in the world.”
