{"id":913459,"date":"2026-10-02T12:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913459\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T12:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T12:54:13","slug":"bizarre-plot-of-jennifer-aniston-rom-com-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913459\/","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre plot of Jennifer Aniston rom-com revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beige, good-looking boy meets New York media girl; girl falls for boy; something bumpy happens; the path of true love yada, yada; and then everything gets resolved in a tidy 90 minutes. So goes every rom-com of the early aughts, all nicely predictable, comfort viewing \u2013 except for Jennifer Aniston\u2019s shocking Rumour Has It, streaming now on Tubi<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Obsessed with entertainment news? Download our new app<\/a> and never miss a headline<\/p>\n

MORE: Aniston\u2019s unexpected $45m life exposed<\/a><\/p>\n

Rumour is billed as a rom-com and while Aniston\u2019s Sarah might tick plenty of the stereotypical boxes (she\u2019s a journalist from the Big Apple flying back to her family\u2019s decidedly Nancy Meyers-ish Cali home for her sister\u2019s wedding) there Rumour departs from the usual script and verges off into the cuckoo. <\/p>\n

Check out what people have said online and fans are genuinely united: Rumour is \u201cthe most creepy movie I\u2019ve seen\u201d, \u201cSuper uncomfortable to watch\u201d, and \u201codd\u201d.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s Sweetheart, is that you? <\/p>\n

The plot hinges on a rumour that Aniston\u2019s Sarah hears back in her hometown, that The Graduate is based on her family\u2019s true story, meaning that her mother and her grandmother, played by a brilliant Shirley Maclain, slept with the same guy. Sarah realises that this lothario, played by Kevin Costner, might be her father and sets off to track him down. Phew! He\u2019s not her Dad so\u2026she sleeps with him. Oh and Sarah is actually engaged, an inconvenient fact she seems to forget for much of the movie. <\/p>\n

Or as one viewer posted<\/a> after watching it: \u201cThe fact that the main character sleeps with a man whom she had just an hour ago thought was her father is so weird. It felt like incest, even though it technically wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bizarre thing is, Aniston, doing press at the time Rumour came out, in December 2005, said she thought the movie was \u201cfun and light\u201d. Erm, okay. <\/p>\n

If the Friends\u2019 star\u2019s decision to do this movie is a head-scratcher, let\u2019s cut her some slack: At that time, she was going through her own annus horribilis. <\/p>\n

In January that year, the world had gasped in shock when Hollywood\u2019s Greatest Marriage of All Time, Aniston\u2019s union with Brad Pitt, came crashing down after he toddled off to film Mr and Mrs Smith and met one Angelina Jolie. Aniston filed for divorce in March 2005 and it was finalised in the lead up to Rumour\u2019s release. <\/p>\n

She later told Vanity Fair<\/a> of the personal toll, \u201cAm I lonely? Yes. Am I upset? Yes. Am I confused? Yes. Do I have my days when I\u2019ve thrown a little pity party for myself? Absolutely. But I\u2019m also doing really well. I\u2019m a tough cookie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compounding the impact of her divorce was that it only stoked the tabloid obsession with her at a time when the paparazzi culture was nothing short of hideous when female stars especially were targeted and chased on a daily basis. <\/p>\n

Only days before the Rumour premiere, Aniston was photographed topless sunbaking in her backyard by a photographer nearly 300 metres away using a very long lens, with the photos published in the US, Europe and the UK. <\/p>\n

While promoting Rumour she said during an interview<\/a> of the paps, \u201cthey\u2019re horrendous and just so reckless\u201d. To get shots of her, she said, \u201cthese men are driving on sidewalks, and cutting through intersections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The snappers, she said, \u201cknow how to be aggressive, scare the shit out of people and get the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this was all coming after another break-up. In 2004, after ten years, Friends had drawn to a close, which was, she later told Vanity Fair, \u201creally painful. It was a family\u2026It was hard to have such a wonderful constant in your life, a place to go every day, and then all of a sudden it\u2019s not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, Rumour was shot on a sound stage nearly next door to where the sitcom had been filmed for a decade. An emotional Aniston told Dark Horizons that, filming Rumour, \u201cWhen August rolled around and normally, I was ready to go back to Friends, I sat there for about a day and went, well, this is awkward\u201d. <\/p>\n

However one thing Aniston has proven is that, in all of this, she never lost her sense of humour. A few years later she joked<\/a> about Rumour while accepting a film award. Taking to the podium she said that she\u2019d noticed \u201ca strange parallel between the movies I\u2019m doing and my life off-screen,\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt started with The Good Girl, then of course Rumour Has It, followed by Derailed. Then there was The Break Up. If any of you have a project entitled Everlasting Love with a Stable Adult Male, I\u2019m at table 6!\u201d <\/p>\n

Rumor Has It is currently streaming on Tubi<\/a> for free. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beige, good-looking boy meets New York media girl; girl falls for boy; something bumpy happens; the path 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