Jennifer Aniston Calls Pregnancy Rumors ‘Really Hurtful’

Jennifer Aniston has opened up in a no-holds-barred conversation about her career past and future and her feeling about the constant pregnancy rumors.

She began by sharing why she decided to finally get back with her old co-stars to film the Friends reunion after so long. Aniston joked that she and the rest of the cast were “seduced” by reunion director Ben Winston‘s pitch, but admitted that she didn’t expect the shoot to be as emotional as it was for her, she told The Hollywood Reporter.

Aniston said seeing the restored sets and old cast mates again brought her back to vulnerable memories of the past, and she had to walk off set several times, quipping that “I don’t know how they cut around it.”

Aniston spoke very fondly of the show. She said that “even if it’s a terribly reviewed, dumb comedy, it doesn’t matter if it brings me joy.” On her career post-Friends, Aniston stated that she grew tired of being typecast as “the damsel in distress, the brokenhearted — your traditional rom-com themes. And at a certain point, it was like, ‘Can’t we do something else?'”

Aniston also had some strong words on her relationship with tabloids and fans’ interest in her private life over her professional life. Aniston said that “I used to take it all very personally — the pregnancy rumors and the whole ‘Oh, she chose career over kids’ assumption. It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t… can I have kids?’ They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”

As recently as 2016, Aniston had to debunk pregnancy rumors in an essay for The Huffington Post.

Aniston noted that despite public reckonings with the treatment of celebrities like Britney Spears, toxic tabloid culture is very much still alive because of social media. She said “the media handed over the sword to any Joe Schmo sitting behind a computer screen to be a troll or whatever they call them and bully people in comment sections. So it’s just sort of changed hands in a way.”

Fans can watch Aniston in The Morning Show on Apple TV+, and she has confirmed that she will be returning for a sequel to the Adam Sandler comedy film Murder Mystery.