Jennifer Aniston Breaks Down in Tears Discussing ‘Friends’ As Its 30th Anniversary Approaches

Friends—the hit NBC sitcom that launched Jennifer Aniston’s career, as well as the careers of her five co-stars—will turn 30 years old this year, and naturally, it came up in conversation when fellow actress Quinta Brunson interviewed Aniston for Variety’s Actors on Actors series. 

After a producer prompted Brunson to ask about what it’s like for Aniston to watch episodes of Friends in 2024, Aniston got emotional and said “Oh God, don’t make me cry.” Brunson emphatically responds, telling Aniston “But you’re already crying. Do you want a minute? We don’t have to talk about—”

“No, no. Sorry,” Aniston responded. “I just started thinking about…Yeah, no. I’m okay. It’s a happy tear.”

Aniston recovered and spoke about Friends—which aired for 10 years, from 1994 to 2004—and what it felt like to see the beloved show turn 30: “It’s so strange to even think that it’s 30 years old, because I remember the day that it was going to premiere on television, on NBC,” Aniston said, per Entertainment Weekly. “Me and Matthew Perry were having lunch somewhere, and we knew Lisa [Kudrow] was getting her hair colored. So we ran into the hair salon, and I snuck up—she was in the sink, hair bowl—and I took the nozzle and just started washing her hair from the guy that was supposed to be doing it. It definitely flew out of control, and that was unfortunate. But the excitement we had—it feels like yesterday.”

Aniston and Kudrow—as well as Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer—continue to mourn the loss of Perry, who died at just 54 years old last October. But, thankfully, there are 10 years’ worth of memories onscreen that will never go away. “The fact that it’s had this long, wonderful life and it still means a lot to people is one of the greatest gifts I think all five of us—all six of us—we never could imagine,” Aniston said. “I talked on FaceTime with [Cox] last night for an hour, and Lisa and the boys, and we just have a really—it’s a family forever.”

Aniston also expounded how the time the show was filmed—pre-the technology of today—allowed her and her five co-stars to escape criticism of the show. “It was in the ‘90s and 2000s, and we had a luxury of there not being social media or the internet, so we were so isolated and protected,” she said. “You weren’t faced with what people are commenting and ripping you apart or whatever. It was a dreamy time, and I know I sound sort of nostalgic, but we were really about the work, we were really about the show.”

She added, poignantly, “It was really an innocent time, where we could roam about the world a lot easier.”