It’s been more than twelve years since Friends ended, but the LOLs and love lives on. Can we just confirm the reunion already? Seriously.
But did you know that one of your favourite characters, and arguably the show’s biggest star, Jennifer Aniston, almost never starred as Rachel Green – and for three reasons.
When the show was being scouted, despite not yet knowing the phenomenon it would become, it was one of the hottest auditions in town, and every actor and actress in Hollywood was vying for a part.
One of them was Ally McBeal and 30 Rock star Jane Krakowski, who felt like Friends was the role that got away.
“Well, I, like almost every actor in the world, auditioned for Friends,’ she told E! News. “I wish I had gotten that one. I actually auditioned for Rachel, and I didn’t go very far.”
Producers also reportedly considered bigger names including Tea Leoni and Elizabeth Berkeley before finally settling on the then-little known Jen.
However it also turns out that producers had originally wanted Jen to play Monica, and Courtney Cox to play Rachel – but thankfully they swapped them out.
Even though Jen did end up landing the gig it still wasn’t all smooth sailing, with the actress also signed on to another show at the same time called Muddling Through, which meant that the role of Rachel was almost recast.
Jen spent time working on both shows but would have to sit out of promotional shoots for Friends while they waited to see which show would get picked up.
“There was a period where I had to stand out of the photographs for the group shots, and I had phone calls from girlfriends saying, ‘I’m auditioning for your part in Friends,'” Jen revealed during a speech that the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2015.
“I just started doing this back-and-forth from Sony to Warner Bros. for two weeks”.
Thankfully Friends stuck and so did Jen.
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