I miss Friends every day, it was the biggest gift, says Jennifer Aniston as she reveals she’ll never do another sitcom

IT may be 30 years exactly since Friends first aired on TV, but Jennifer Aniston says she still misses the show every single day.

The actress, now 55, has starred in a string of Hollywood movies since playing Rachel Green in the hit Nineties ­sitcom, which she calls the “biggest gift” of her life.

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But she says she doubts she will ever be as happy as she was then.

When asked what her favourite job has been during her glittering career, Jennifer said: “Obviously Friends — that’s a no-brainer.

“I would have to say that is number one.

“Every single day I miss the schedule of filming . . . it’s the best schedule ever on the planet.”

Jennifer also reveals she would be reluctant to do another TV sitcom because it could never rank up there with the Emmy, Golden Globe and Bafta-winning series.

She told the SmartLess podcast: “If I knew it would be the same experience as I had with those guys, yes, but I doubt that will ever happen.”

“Those guys” are Lisa Kudrow, 61, who played Phoebe Buffay; Courteney Cox, 60, who was Monica Geller; David Schwimmer, 57, who portrayed Monica’s brother Ross Geller; Matt LeBlanc, 57, as Joey Tribbiani; and Matthew Perry, the show’s iconic Chandler Bing, who died last year from a drug overdose.

Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004, followed a tight-knit group of six friends in New York and remains one of the most successful TV shows of all time.

A massive 52million US viewers tuned in for the series finale, called The Last One, which was the most watched television episode of the 2000s.

Along the way, it also made each of the actors incredibly rich.

While they each received just $22,500 per episode when the sitcom launched, towards the end they made headlines the world over after negotiating $1million per instalment.

Today, the surviving former co-stars remain as close in real life as they were on screen.

Reflecting on the show’s heyday, Jennifer said: “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.

“Me and Matthew Perry were having lunch somewhere and we knew Lisa was getting her hair coloured.

“So we ran into the hair salon and I snuck up and she was in the sink, the hair bowl.

“And I took the nozzle and started washing her hair from the guy that was supposed to be doing it, and it definitely flew out of control and that was unfortunate, but the excitement we had — it feels like yesterday.”

She added of the much-loved show: “So the fact that it 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 have imagined.”

Jennifer told the Variety YouTube channel that they will forever see each other as “family”.

She added: “We still see each other.

“I talked on FaceTime with Court last night for, like, an hour, and Lisa and the boys . . . it’s a family forever.”

But despite making each of them multi-millionaires and cementing their acting careers, the time after Friends ended was tinged by tragedy.

Following years of struggling with addiction, Matthew Perry was found lifeless at his Los Angeles home on October 28 last year aged 54, leaving his co-stars devastated.

‘SHIP HAS SAILED’

His cause of death was revealed to be “acute effects of ketamine”.

A coroner’s report added that contributing factors included “drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine”.

Meanwhile, Matt LeBlanc went on to find success co-hosting British motoring show Top Gear.

But at home, he was left heartbroken after his daughter with wife Melissa McKnight — Marina, now 20 — began suffering seizures shortly after her birth in 2004.

It turned out she had a form of dysplasia.

Two years later, he and former model Melissa divorced.

In 2010, Courteney split from actor hubby David Arquette, 53, after 11 years of marriage.

They later got divorced.

And while Jennifer achieved Hollywood stardom thanks to movies such as The Break-Up and Marley & Me, her private life was just as rocky.

Her first marriage to actor Brad Pitt ended in 2005 after five years, and her second — to actor Justin Theroux — was even shorter, lasting from 2015 until 2018.

In 2022, Jennifer told how battling years of infertility as she tried to become a mum had taken its toll.

She said: “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas — you name it.

“I was throwing everything at it.

“I would have given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour’.

“You just don’t think it.

“So here I am today.

“The ship has sailed.”

Jennifer believes that the world was a very different place when Friends was released.

It was just two years after people were able to text for the first time, and smartphones had yet to be invented.

She told the Lunch With Bruce podcast: “So much has happened since then.

“The world has completely changed.

“We all went through things personally that were hard, wonderful, you know, difficult changes, unexpected this and that, and the world changed.

“What did we do before phones?

“How did we all get so quickly addicted to a device?

“I know it was built to hijack our brains and your mind and it did it.

“But what did we do?

“We would just talk with each other, laugh with each other, tell stories.

“You didn’t have to run to a phone.”

‘INNOCENT TIME’

And she says it was a “luxury” for the Friends cast to find fame a full decade before the social media sensation, with Facebook launching in 2004, followed by Twitter in 2006 and Instagram in 2010.

She went on: “It was in the Nineties and, you know, the 2000s, and we had a luxury of not being on social media or the internet and so we were so isolated and kind of protected.

“You weren’t faced with weird people 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.

“People weren’t like, ‘Oh you’re awesome, you’re the best.

“Oh so and so sucked . . . this is who’s the worst and you’re the best’.

“It was just a really innocent time where we could roam about the world a lot easier . . .

“We’re lucky that we found success before the internet and social media.”

While she has enjoyed her fair share of ups and downs, life today for Jennifer is good.

She recently starred in, and produced, the award-winning Apple+ series The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon.

And despite having a net worth of £228million, single Jennifer is a self-confessed home body.

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She spends her days in her £16million mansion in the exclusive enclave of Bel Air in Los Angeles with her rescue dogs Clyde, who is a grey schnauzer mix; Sophie, a black and white pit- bull mix; and white shepherd mix Lord Chesterfield.

As well as walking her pack, she likes to exercise at least five times a week herself.

But more vigorous workouts are out following a back injury in 2021, so she now uses resistance-based equipment.

Last year, Jennifer partnered with resistance fitness company Pvolve and also became the chief creative officer for a collagen company called Vital Proteins.

She said: “I get up, walk the dogs, meditate, then walk the dogs, then make my coffee, feed the dogs while the coffee is brewing, read the paper . . . then I work out.

“No breakfast.

“I intermittent fast, but I do have my coffee with my Vital Proteins and a little dash of milk.

“I would kill someone if I didn’t have my coffee in the morning!”

Jennifer loves to cook and make cocktails for her friends, who describe her home as a “club house” where they can all go to mix.

She said: “I love to entertain and I love to light fires while entertaining.

“I find every one of my friends has something wonderful to offer. I’m so covered.”

Well, she has certainly proved throughout her career that you can never have enough friends.