Jennifer Aniston Recalls Walking off ‘Friends’ Reunion Set

Jennifer Aniston revealed that reuniting with the cast of Friends for the HBO Max reunion special earlier this year was more difficult than she imagined, telling The Hollywood Reporter simply that “time travel is hard.” Aniston, who played Rachel Green on the beloved sitcom from 1994 to 2004, revealed in a new profile for the magazine that while she expected the reunion to be “fun,” she ended up walking out of filming “at certain points” because of the emotions she experienced.

Reuniting with co-stars Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer for the HBO Max reunion, which aired in May, was a blast back to the past for all the actors. “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 said. “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?’” the Emmy winner continued. Aniston continued that it was a “very jarring” experience, one that required her to take a few moments to herself throughout. “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,” she admitted. “I don’t know how they cut around it.” 

Aniston previously revealed the mixed emotions of the reunion on Rob Lowe’s Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast in September, telling the actor the reunion “really took us all down way harder than we anticipated.” She said at the time, “Going back there, it’s nostalgic in a way that’s kind of also a little melancholy, you know. Because a lot has changed and we have all gone down different roads, not so easy and some easy … for each of us.”