{"id":218774,"date":"2025-10-22T21:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218774\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T21:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:30:11","slug":"jennifer-aniston-reveals-the-reason-she-turned-down-snl-before-landing-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218774\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Aniston reveals the reason she turned down SNL before landing Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jennifer Aniston<\/a> has explained why she turned down a role in the Saturday Night Live<\/a> cast before Friends<\/a> took off, saying she felt the sketch show at the time was \u201cvery male-dominated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Morning Show star, 56, auditioned for SNL in the early 1990s, shortly before hit sitcom Friends arrived on the air in 1994.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Dax Shepard\u2019s Armchair Expert podcast<\/a>, Aniston said she made the bold decision to turn down SNL creator Lorne Michaels.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought I was such hot s***. The story of that is all very confusing,\u201d she reflected. <\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cHonestly, today I\u2019d have to ask Lorne, because I remember, I was in New York City, and I had a meeting with Lorne Michaels, and I ran into [Adam] Sandler and [David] Spade in the room right outside. And I knew Sandler forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why I had this self-righteous attitude of \u2018I don\u2019t know if women are treated the way they should be treated on this show. It\u2019s… very male-dominated, I would love to be here if it was in the Gilda Radner day.\u2019 I mean, this is the brain that semi-remembers things that are back that far. Something like that. I can\u2019t remember, but I just remember Friends then happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JenniferJennifer Aniston appeared on Dax Shepard\u2019s \u2018Armchair Expert\u2019 podcast to discuss her childhood and career (Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard\/YouTube)<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the episode, Aniston rejected the suggestion that she is a \u201cnepo baby.\u201d Her father, John Aniston, starred on the soap opera Days of Our Lives for several decades, but Aniston said her father discouraged her from following in his footsteps.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad was telling me, \u2018Please don\u2019t do this, you\u2019re just going to suffer rejection,\u2019\u201d she recalled. \u201c\u2018Just go get a job. Like, get a real job.\u2019 All the clich\u00e9 things. [But] whatever drives you, if you find passion in something and you love it, go do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that it was natural for her to seek a career in the acting field, arguing: \u201cI mean, look at all the law firms. Blanky Blank Blanky and Blanky Blank. I mean, all right, isn\u2019t that a version of it\u2019s all in the family? It\u2019s all in the family. So, maybe you got into a door because you\u2019re so-and-so\u2019s kid, but if you suck, guess what? You\u2019re not going to continue to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the same interview, Aniston also revealed the unconventional items she asked an NBC boss for after the success of Friends.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-218774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}