The lifelong dream role Jennifer Aniston never got to play: “I waited too long”
In the 1990s and early 2000s, you couldn’t move for Jennifer Aniston.
As Rachel Green in the mega-successful sitcom Friends, she didn’t just dominate the TV ratings but changed pop culture forever, to realise which you only have to look at the abundance of the ‘Rachel’ haircut at the time, and she was married to one of the biggest movie stars in the world (uh oh) while just starting to break into the world of films, so it was overall a great time to be her.
In the years since Friends wrapped up, the iconic blonde has taken to the big screen like a duck to water, becoming a staple of noughties rom-coms, often opposite Adam Sandler, and has defied negative stereotypes surrounding older women in Hollywood, regularly finding work in high-profile movies that still rightly portray her as an object of desire. She is the most successful Friends cast member at the movies, and it isn’t even close; maybe Courtney Cox comes second because of Scream, although that was technically during Friends.
Regardless, it feels like Aniston can have any role she wants, but that hasn’t always been the case, as she revealed at the 2020 Sag Awards, taking home a trophy for her work on The Morning Show, that there was one character she had always had her eye on. “I wanted to be Wonder Woman,” she confessed, “But I waited too long”.
The history of DC’s most famous female character is fascinating. Cathy Lee Crosby played her in a 1974 TV movie and, a few years later, Lynda Carter took over for the classic TV show, while in cinema, the most famous (or infamous) alter ego of Diana Prince is Gal Gadot.
The Israeli star debuted as the Amazonian in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and went on to appear a few more times across the DCEU, including in two standalone pictures, before that project crashed and burned in a spectacular ball of flame. As it stands, we don’t know who will play her in James Gunn’s reimagined DC film universe.
The timings have never quite worked out for Aniston, and going by the ages of the actors who have played the character, she was too young for Wonder Woman’s 1970s heyday and too old for her recent outings. She was probably unsuitable for the unaired pilot starring Adrianne Palicki and Pedro Pascal.
Does this missed opportunity haunt Aniston? Not really, as she’s enjoying her current run of form too much to care. “I really, honestly, feel that I’m just kicking into a creative stride,” she continued, “I’ve just discovered a new love of this in a new way that I didn’t know that I had before, so I almost have new eyes that I’m seeing what it is that I do as an actor.”
It’s a wonder (sorry) if Jennifer Aniston would have made a good Wonder Woman, and sadly, we’ll never know the answer, but one thing we can agree on is that she would have been a damn sight better than Gal Gadot.
