Jennifer Aniston covers the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, mostly to promote The Morning Show. She’s 56 years old now, and she seems more content and centered these days. She’s in a relatively new relationship with hypnotist Jim Curtis, she’s booked and busy and she still has tons of girlfriends and guy friends. In this interview, she doesn’t talk about her relationship with Curtis, but she’s giving Bazaar the greatest hits – nostalgia about Friends, her goddess circle, female empowerment and her years-long struggles with IVF. Some highlights:
Correcting the narrative: “The older I get, the less I care about correcting a narrative, because it will happen eventually. The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away. Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice – when something has been said that isn’t true and I need to right the wrong. And then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.”
Her parents: “Their divorce was not amicable in any way, shape or form, and it was a time when there wasn’t a lot of awareness of how to behave for the sake of the kid. That was the least of [my parents’] worries – it was more, how could they hurt each other? And I was just a pawn.”
‘Friends’ was the formative experience of her life: “It completely formed who I was. It was pure joy. I looked forward to it every day. I couldn’t wait to get to work. I couldn’t wait to see those people. I couldn’t wait to read the scripts – we’d shoot the show every Friday night, and right after we wrapped, we’d find the new script for Monday morning in our dressing-room. I was just as excited to find out what was going to happen as I’m sure the audience was.” The cast were, and still are, famously close-knit, even banding together to ensure that each of them was paid the same salary (“There’s nothing stronger than the power of six people demanding the same thing”).
On Matthew Perry: “It’s heartbreaking that he had so many demons. But boy, for someone who had that much inner turmoil, he sure got to laugh a lot, and that was everything to him.” She is adamant that, without Perry, there is no world in which there would ever be a Friends remake or sequel (“It would be literally, physically impossible”), but it means a lot to her that a new generation of viewers have embraced the show, for all its anachronistic flaws. “People will say that they go back and watch episodes to help their mental health – that if they’re stressed about the news or the world, they’ll just sit down and watch a Friends episode. And that’s the ultimate compliment.”
Telling her IVF-failure story years later: “They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes. That’s not anybody’s business. But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it – the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic. It does affect me – I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings. That’s why I thought, ‘What the hell?’” She spoke on behalf of others in her situation, “because I knew a lot of women at the time who were trying to have kids, who were dealing with IVF. So it did feel like it was not only for myself, but for any women who were struggling with the same issue”. ”
The lack of regulation around AI & social media: “Big tech, it’s crazy…I’m sure the guys who came up with it thought it was a great idea and, yeah, congratulations on your billions, but it has taken down a huge portion of humanity.”
Her thoughts on feminism: For Aniston, feminism is about solidarity and presenting a united front. “It doesn’t mean the exclusion of men, or that men suck. It’s about women wanting to come to the party, to be at the table. But we need men too. Men and women need each other. It’s a wonderful collaboration.”
I remember, more than a decade ago, when there was this extremely weird celebrity trend of actresses saying crazy sh-t about feminism and arguing that feminism is actually bad or harmful. It was bizarre, but I also remember Jennifer Aniston being asked about it and she was like “are you bitches crazy, feminism is awesome” (I’m paraphrasing). I always respected her for that, that she didn’t follow that trend and she made a really simple argument of “feminism is not anti-man, it just means we’re fighting for equality.” As for Friends and the late Matthew Perry… I’m glad that they would never do some sad “twenty years later” Friends sequel. They hopefully wouldn’t have done that under any circumstances, but I appreciate that they’re not going to do it given Perry’s passing. It just would have been a huge bummer anyway.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red. Cover courtesy of Bazaar UK.
