Jennifer Aniston: ‘Friends Was a Blessing And A Curse’

It’s the role that made Jennifer Aniston famous but in a new interview the actress has admitted that ten years of playing Rachel Green may have hindered her career in parts. In a new interview with Empire magazine she reveals, ‘It’s a blessing and a curse. It gave us everything but also gives you more of a challenge, to shape people’s perceptions of you. It’s “Matthew (Perry) is Chandler Bing and Jennifer is Rachel Green”, so it’s hard for people to even believe that we’re playing other people. It’s just taking gentle baby steps and allowing your fans to grow with you.’

In the interview Jennifer, who has recently gained critical acclaim for her gritty role in Cake, also admits that she is still incredibly close with her five Friends co-stars Matt Le Blanc, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox and Matthew Perry. She added, ‘We’re lucky to actually love each other. We’re really fortunate that there’s not a bad seed in the bunch and yes, we were all really friends and cared about each other and had each other’s backs. We went through some really challenging times personally and were there for each other.'

The hit TV show, which Jennifer was earning $1million per episode towards the end, finished in 2004. She added, 'It’s really nice to have five people who can understand what it is that you’re going through… I know we’ll always have a special place in each-others’ hearts for one another, but we don’t all [see each other]. The girls definitely do.' Indeed, last year Jennifer, Courteney and Lisa performed a Friends reunion skit on Jimmy Kimmel Live to tie in with the show's 20-year anniversary. Jennifer added, 'Matty and Matt we see. Schwimmer’s out in New York so we don’t see him that much, actually. But yeah, it’s something where we know that if we all got in a room together we’d pick up right where we left off.’

When asked what they all talk about when they’re together, Jennifer adds, ‘Why are we not still on Friends? Why did we let that go?’ Most importantly, what of those Friends reunion rumours? Well, you might be waiting quite a while. ‘We always joke about how we’d love to go back. We’ve all had moments of going, “Why don’t we just do a Thanksgiving episode?” But it’s too many people and too many different roads that people are down. Now, and I said this a while ago, we should just wait until we’re really old and be Golden Friends.’

Joey, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross and Phoebe all hanging out in an old people's home? Now that is something we'd like to see...