The role Jennifer Aniston didn’t believe she could pull off: “I thought I would be a laughing stock”
For most of the cast of Friends, the biggest challenge was establishing themselves away from the show. Jennifer Aniston particularly found it difficult to have the same level of loyalty, especially when she’d already known what it was like to reach the peak of success.
On top of that, the Friends cast was genuinely like a family, one that felt comfortable enough to challenge the writers whenever they felt that lines could be slightly adjusted, or even storylines, because they knew their characters well enough to challenge when it was needed. Being comfortable with doing that only comes from having support around you, which is what each of the actors was to each other – real-life friends who formed a close-knit family.
As is expected, therefore, breaking out of that was difficult. Some actors would naturally go further than others, but that didn’t stop each of them from trying to get out there and prove their versatility in different ways. Matt LeBlanc took the unique approach with a spin-off, Joey, in what some would have considered risky, especially as the others made it clear they had wanted to move on to other projects separate from Friends.
Matthew Perry took on a few film and television projects, including 17 Again and the NBC comedy Go On, but mainly focused on his recovery from a long-term addiction in between. Lisa Kudrow remained fairly prolific, appearing in several films and shows in both starring roles and as cameos, a similar journey to Courteney Cox, most notably appearing in the Scream franchise. Jennifer Aniston seemed to do the best of all, morphing into a more prominent Hollywood presence with roles in films like The Break-Up, He’s Just Not That Into You, Just Go With It, Horrible Bosses, and more.
The transition wasn’t easy. In fact, when Friends ended, she was also going through a lot of personal challenges, including navigating a divorce and going into therapy to manage better, but that wasn’t the only thing that Aniston struggled with, and it took her a while to “shed” her character Rachel Green, mainly because she felt that, once you’ve nailed comedy, studio execs no longer see you as a versatile actor who can do other things, like drama or action.
The first time she felt she was able to actually prove herself beyond the popular NBC sitcom was 2002’s The Good Girl, in which Aniston played a disgruntled big-box store worker who is bored with her life before having an affair with a new cashier; the antithesis of her girl-next-door character in Friends. “It allowed me a little more time,” Aniston reflected, per The Guardian. “It’s like I said, I just want to be around for a while. I just don’t want to fade away and wash up – because I didn’t take chances, you know.”
She went on, “I wanted to know. I was getting very comfortable in my comedy mode and I wanted to scare myself a little bit. And that was good, because I didn’t know if I could pull it off. I thought I would be a laughing stock. And one of my greatest fears is being laughed at.”
Elsewhere, she said in a roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter that the film was “the first time I got to really shed whatever the Rachel character was” and “to be able to disappear into someone who wasn’t that was such a relief to me”. She also elaborated on the struggle of only being seen as a comedy actor, and that movie made her feel like she could change the tide and prove herself in other ways.
Even today, Aniston is still tied to her role in Friends, even though she transitioned into different roles more seamlessly than her co-stars, establishing herself as a major industry name in her own right, and it might not have been the easiest game to play, but her hard work paid off, and even though there are still heavy associations, she’s no longer boxed into one singular genre.
