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Celebrity

08th Dec 2021

Jennifer Aniston walked off set “several times” during emotional Friends reunion

Sarah McKenna Barry

“I don’t know how they cut around it.”

Jennifer Aniston has spoken about the emotions she felt during the Friends reunion episode which aired on HBO earlier this year.

Aniston, who played Rachel Green in the iconic series, told The Hollywood Reporter that filming the special was “harder” than she had anticipated, and that she had to walk off set multiple times to compose herself.

She said: “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.’ 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.'”

Jen went on to say the the nostalgia of the reunion took her by surprise.

She said: “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?'”

She continued: “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.”

At the reunion, Aniston was joined by her former co-stars David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry.

During the show, Jen wowed fans by admitting that she had a crush on Schwimmer during filming, while David shared that the feeling was mutual.

When the cast were asked by host James Corden if there were any off-set romances, Jen said: “Well, I mean… David.”

He then elaborated: “The first season I had a major crush on Jen.

“And I think at some point we were both crushing hard on each other, but it was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship. We never crossed that boundary. We respected that.”

Jen added that the feelings were “reciprocal” and said that they channeled all that “adoration and love” into Ross and Rachel.