Jennifer Aniston Said The Friends Reunion Was Hard For This Reason
"It was a sucker punch in the heart in a way."
My apologies if you just stopped crying over HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion, because Jennifer Aniston’s quotes about the long-awaited event will probably make you sob all over again. Shortly after the special aired on May 27, Aniston paid a visit to SiriusXM’s Gayle King in the House, where she opened up about how strange it was to return to the set. “It was a sucker punch in the heart in a way,” she said of the experience. “It was for all of us, I think. Even Courteney [Cox] we got tears out of.”
According to Aniston, she and her fellow cast members hadn’t been on the set since 2004, when Friends ended its decade-long run. “We romanticized it, but you also have to remember we haven’t been there [since the series finale],” Aniston continued. “And that time was a very specific time, when we were saying goodbye to something that we didn’t want to, we cared deeply about, but we knew it was the time to say goodbye. Our lives were ahead of us. We had our future ahead of us. It almost felt like time had stopped and we time traveled. And there’s good in that, and then there’s heartbreak in that.”
Though it’s been 17 years since NBC aired the Friends series finale, Aniston has seemingly remained as tight with her co-stars as ever. When asked by Gayle King what being a part of the long-running sitcom meant to her, Aniston was sure to mention how those on-screen friendships became IRL friendships. “The amount of love that people have for these six characters is something that you can’t really explain the meaning of it,” she added. “Being reminded of the amount of happiness this show brought to people, that’s a special thing to be a part of.”
And though Aniston has only ever remained friends with her co-stars, she revealed during Friends: The Reunion that she and David Schwimmer had crushes on each other back in the day and almost became more than friends. "At some point, we were both crushing hard on each other — but it was like a two ships passing [in the night] because one of us was always in a relationship,” Schwimmer (who played Aniston’s on-screen love interest) explained during the special. Womp, womp.
Schwimmer and Aniston are both seemingly single at the moment, so who knows — maybe their Friends reunion will inspire another kind of reunion. I def wouldn’t hate it!
