Jennifer Aniston Says She Struggled Being Typecast as Rachel After 'Friends'

A blessing and a curse. Jennifer Aniston became a household name when she landed the role of Rachel Green in Friends, but the character proved to be a double-edged sword for her career.

“I could not get Rachel Green off of my back for the life of me,” the We’re the Millers star, 51, told the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, June 24, as part of the outlet’s Drama Actress Roundtable discussion. “I could not escape Rachel from Friends, just Rachel from Friends, it’s on all the time and you’re just like, ‘Stop playing this f–king show.'”

She added, “I completely just fought with myself and who I was in this industry forever because it was just constantly about trying to prove I was more than that.”

Aniston credited her role as Justine Last in the 2002 film The Good Girl with finally breaking her out of the mold.

“The Good Girl 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,” the California native recalled. “But I remember the panic that set over me, thinking, ‘Oh God, I don’t know if I can do this. Maybe they’re right. Maybe everybody else is seeing something I’m not seeing, which is you are only that girl in the New York apartment with the purple walls.’ So, I was almost doing it for myself just to see if I could do something other than that. And it was terrifying because you’re doing it in front of the world.”

However, the Morning Show star still holds a special place for Friends in her heart. Aniston revealed in an interview for Variety on Monday, June 22, that she still rewatches episodes.

“I love it! I love stumbling on a Friends episode,” she told costar Lisa Kudrow. “This one time I was with Courteney [Cox], and we were trying to find something to reference, an old Friends thing and then we stumbled on — there’s bloopers online, like, 15 minutes worth of bloopers. We sat there at the computer like two nerds watching these bloopers laughing at ourselves.”

Aniston and Kudrow, 56, will reunite with their four other Friends costars — Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer — for an upcoming special on HBO Max. The reunion was scheduled to be released in May, but filming was pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.