Jennifer Aniston voices a tween's inner thoughts in 'Out of My Mind.' Why the film's star 'couldn't stop crying' when she learned the news.

When Phoebe-Rae Taylor found out that Jennifer Aniston would be voicing her inner thoughts in the new Disney film Out of My Mind, she “couldn’t stop crying.”

In the movie, which starts streaming Nov. 22 on Disney+, the first-time actress stars as Melody, a sixth grader with cerebral palsy (CP) who navigates home and school all while being nonspeaking. She also has to stick up for herself, with the help of her parents (Rosemarie DeWitt and Luke Kirby) and an educator (Courtney Taylor), when she’s not given the same opportunities as abled kids.

Taylor has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, but unlike her character, she is able to speak.

The 15-year-old told Yahoo Entertainment that Aniston and Friends were a “massive part of my home growing up,” and she was even named after Lisa Kudrow’s character on the show.

“It was crazy because I've loved her ever since I was tiny,” she said of Aniston. “I have always loved her, and she's helped me through a lot in my life.”

Out of My Mind is based on the 2010 young adult novel by Sharon M. Draper, which called for adapting a lot of Melody’s inner thoughts for the screen.

“When you're tasked with translating from a book to a movie, there is so much internal dialogue going on in a novel and so you do worry about how much can I bring over to the film,” director Amber Sealey told Yahoo Entertainment. “So we did ultimately decide that we liked the concept of her having an inner voice.”

That’s when Sealey and her team decided on Aniston and then incorporated the ’90s sitcom into the film.

“Phoebe herself in real life has this love and obsession with Friends and with Jennifer Aniston,” she said, “so we borrowed that from Phoebe's real life and brought that into the film.”

Rosemarie DeWitt, who plays Melody’s mother, told Yahoo Entertainment that having Aniston and Taylor “connected through celluloid now forever [is] so cool.”

DeWitt said that the actors “were able to put a lot of ourselves in” their roles. “A lot of our fears, a lot of our longings, or a lot of our love, you know, and [the movie] could hold it,” she explained.

The search for who would play Melody took about two years, Sealey said. She and her team wanted to be intentional about the process as well.

“We had amazing casting directors who not only reached out to agencies and actors, but also we were reaching out to disability rights organizations and CP organizations and doctor's offices and physical therapy offices and just spreading a wide, worldwide net,” she explained.

Because this was Taylor’s first foray into acting, Sealey said the teen came to the project with “a real open heart.”

“We were doing fun things like singing songs,” she said, “and really, with a kid as well, it's so fun because as a director, you can really play. So we got to do a lot of playing, which I loved.”

Taylor admitted she was “so nervous because I had no idea what to expect because I have never ever been on a film set before.”

She added, “I remember having no idea what was about to happen, but I met the most amazing people — my classmates, the crew, the director — they were all so welcoming and understanding. It really helped a lot.”

While the film tackles the challenges of having a disability, it also confronts the misconceptions that many able-bodied people have as well.

For DeWitt, she hopes audiences will see “how pushed-aside people with disabilities can be, how people don’t attempt to become a person in a wheelchair — they just do.”

Taylor said she just doesn’t “want people to judge.”

“I feel like people need to understand that kids and adults who have disabilities are just people. Even though we might look or sound or act a bit different, we are exactly the same,” she said. “We have our opinions, we have likes, we hate things, we love things, but we're mums, dads, daughters [and] sisters.”

Out of My Mind starts streaming Nov. 22 on Disney+.