Jennifer Aniston is among the world’s most interviewed women. Acting since 1988 and arguably one of the biggest sitcom stars of all time, the Los Angeles native has been asked every single question under the sun, giving her a collective media training greater than most Premier League footballers. So when she comes out with something new and personal during an interview, it’s rare, and the internet invariably goes wild.
Her most recent interview with the Wall Street Journal magazine has provided exactly that, in droves. Aniston may be media trained — much of the article, for instance, is about her pivot to producing, and the new series of her AppleTV+ drama The Morning Show — but she’s also made peace with her persona as a starlet, and doesn’t care how she comes off as much any more. Or, in the words of interviewer Ellen Gamerman, “She’s past caring whether you think she’s woo-woo.”
And sometimes she does come across as a bit woo-woo. From crystals and salmon-sperm facials to psychics who predicted her relationship with Brad Pitt, here are the wildest things to come out of Aniston’s interview for WSJ.
1. Collective bargaining led to fat Friends paychecks
As part of the interview, writer Gamerman speaks to Aniston’s The Morning Show costar and co-executive producer Reese Witherpsoon, who shares how the Friends cast (Witherspoon played Rachel’s sister in two episodes of the hit sitcom) would negotiate their wages equally, never breaking rank. Hence the fabled $1 million per episode pay cheques by the end of the series.
Later in the article, Aniston touches on it, too. “It would’ve destroyed us,” she says, “I think, if someone was soaring financially.”
2. Aniston took two years to recover from her divorce
With Friends coming to an end in 2004 and Aniston’s divorce from Brad Pitt not long after, she references how she was slower than some of her castmates when it came to looking for other work. “I’d gone through my divorce, and there was a real shift in my life in terms of coming out from under the rubble of that,” Aniston told WSJ.
Then, in 2007, she switched managers and her life changed. “And then I was finding my work to be a real place of solace. [My manager] came in and kind of witnessed how I behaved in the business then, and she would give me these great bits of advice, almost like a pep talk. ‘You’re going to get on the phone, you’re going to address it like this.’”
3. Adam Sandler sends her flowers every Mother’s Day
Adam Sandler, who has played Aniston’s on-screen love interest in three films (Just Go With It, Murder Mystery, Murder Mystery 2), and his wife Jackie are close with the actress, and she shared with WSJ how the couple sends her flowers every Mother’s Day.
Aniston has previously opened up about her struggles with fertility, telling Allure in December 2022: “My late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard sh*t, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be […] I was trying to get pregnant.