While taping of the Friends reunion special for HBO Max has been delayed once again by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jennifer Aniston remains resolutely optimistic.
Speaking to Deadline via phone after the news broke, she said, “It’s going to be super. You know what? This has also given us more time to make it even more exciting and more fun than it would have been. So I choose to see it as the glass is half-full that it got postponed. Look, we’re not going anywhere. You’re never going to get rid of Friends, sorry. You’re suck with us for life guys.”
The unscripted special was originally set to shoot mid-March. But when COVID shut down all production, it was pushed to May, aimed to coincide with HBO Max’s launch on May 27. As of today, there is now no set date.
“Unfortunately it’s very sad that we had to move it again,” Aniston said. She is, however, looking forward to getting back to it when it’s safe to do so. “It was, ‘How do we do this with live audiences?’ This is not a safe time. Period. That’s the bottom line. It’s not a safe time to do it.”
In the special, Aniston will be joined by fellow Friends stars Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry, and the show, directed by Ben Winston, will be shot on the series’ original soundstage, Stage 24, on the Warner Bros. lot. With the cast and creators Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane executive producing.
Unsurprisingly, 2020 has not been Aniston’s favorite year in general. “I’m supposed to renew my drivers license and I don’t want it to say 2020 on it,” she said. “I just want to get 2020 out and behind us.
Aug. 09 2020 |
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Jun. 23 2020 |
In the early ’90s, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow met for the first time at the table read for “Friends.” They didn’t know it at the time, but the two characters that they were be playing — Aniston’s Rachel Green and Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay — would become two of the most beloved in TV history.
In an interview for Variety‘s Actors on Actors issue, on newsstands this week, Aniston and Kudrow discussed their current TV roles. Aniston is a frontrunner in this year’s Emmys race for best actress in a drama for her portrayal of anchor Alex Levy on “The Morning Show.” And Kudrow delivers buzzy supporting turns in two Netflix comedies — “Feel Good” and “Space Force.”
But as they got to talking, they quickly recalled what it was like to be at that “Friends” table read. “You were wearing an appropriate Phoebe Buffay — like a white linen, hippie shirt, and you had a bunch of seashells and necklaces on,” Aniston said. “And you had your hair pulled up in two little clips, and you had these little blond tendrils. So, so, so beautiful! And Courteney [Cox] had on a pink baby tee with a white trim.”
“Gee whiz!” Kudrow said. “I was trying to get into the character.”
Aniston later told a story about finding “Friends” clips on the Internet. “This one time I was with Courteney, and we were trying to find something to reference, an old ‘Friends’ thing,” Aniston said. “And then we stumbled on — there’s bloopers online — and we sat there at the computer like two nerds watching these bloopers laughing at ourselves.”
Aniston revealed what it’s like for her to revisit the show now. “Here’s what I love, is when I watch an episode, I’ll usually remember where we broke during the scene,” Aniston said. “You and I would always get into these fits of laughter because you had this wonderful ability to — you were about to hit your punchline, and you would do this adorable thing where you would break. You would say the punchline, and you would always turn to the audience and say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s really funny.’”
“I didn’t want to ruin it,” recalled Kudrow, who hasn’t been revisiting Phoebe. “I don’t watch the show. I’m still not watching it in the hopes that one day we sit down and watch them together.”
When it’s safe to film again, the six cast members of “Friends” will sit down together for a reunion special for HBO Max. “That will be really great,” Kudrow said. “I can’t wait to do that.”
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