Jennifer Aniston’s Ex Tate Donovan Was ‘Dying Inside’ While Filming His ‘Friends’ Role

Jennifer Aniston’s Ex Tate Donovan recently shared that he was “dying inside” while working alongside her on Friends.

Prior to her high-profile relationship with Brad Pitt, Aniston dated the Hercules voice-actor who also had a guest-starring role on her iconic sitcom.

The actor recently opened up about their relationship, revealing that they had to do scenes together while off-screen they were going through a break-up.

“I was just happy to be on the team. The only bummer was Jennifer and I were breaking up at the time,” 54-year-old Donovan told Us Weekly exclusively. “And so that was tricky to sort of act, and act like we are just meeting each other, and falling in love, or whatever, interested in each other, when we’re sort of breaking up. That was just tough.”

As fans will remember, Donavan appeared on the show as Joshua, a personal shopping client of Aniston’s character Rachel at her Bloomingdale’s job.

“It was just six episodes. I mean, only because we were breaking up. We were like, ‘Hey, can we not keep doing this? ‘Cause this is really painful and tough.’ The people that know that we dated think that we met on Friends. But in fact we had dated for two years before then, and it was over by the time we were on Friends together,” Donovan went on to explain.

While the break-up was difficult, the actor says that his time on the show wasn’t a totally negative experience, as the cast treated him very well.

“Those six people were amazing to me. They were fantastic. It wasn’t cliquey for me at all. I was lucky,” Donovan said. “The good thing that came out of it was that everyone was really cool about it, and really as helpful as they could be. In other words, they were just compassionate, very compassionate about the whole break-up.”

“It was sort of like I proved that, hey, I guess I’m a pro. If you can go through a tough break-up, and still do your job, then you’re a pro. It was good,” he continued. “It was really ultimately a great experience of how people can treat you really well, and you still do your job even though you’re sort of dying inside.”

He went on to recall that the cast even pranked him once, and added, “Those guys were so great to me when they sort of didn’t have to be. They were just really cool.”

While his time on Friends was short-lived, Donovan has had a career full of roles in numerous films and TV shows. Most recently he appeared in the MacGyver reboot as James MacGyver the father of Lucas Till’s Angus “Mac” MacGyver. No word on if he will be reprising the role for the upcoming third season.