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Jennifer Aniston Said Returning to the Friends Set Was a "Sucker Punch in the Heart"

Tessa Petak
2 min read

Jennifer Aniston is still thinking about the emotional Friends reunion that aired last week on HBO Max.

She recently appeared on Gayle King's SiriusXM show, Gayle King in the House, and revealed what it was like to step onto the iconic set 17 years later. "It was a sucker punch in the heart in a way," she told King of the experience, which was filmed for Friends: The Reunion.

But of course she wasn't the only one who got choked up when returning to the set — the actress said all of the cast members had a similar experience.

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RELATED: See Which Friends Stars Hung Out After the Reunion

"It was for all of us, I think," she said. "Even Courteney [Cox] we got tears out of! And I don't even know -— she's so, you know, not emotional."

Jennifer Aniston Returning to Friends Set on Reunion
Jennifer Aniston Returning to Friends Set on Reunion

Getty Images

She added that they all knew that the show's sets would be recreated but they didn't realize just how exact the replicas would be.

"We were very naive in what we were expecting," she said, recalling that the sets were recreated "down to the shelves and the little tchotchkes details."

"It was excitement," she told King. "[Like] 'This is going to be so fun to walk onto the set and they're bringing all of the sets out from storage and putting it all back together.' We romanticized it."

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RELATED: Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer Were "Crushing Hard on Each Other" During Season 1 of Friends

The actress, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of her beloved character Rachel Green, partially attributed the emotions to the fact that they hadn't been to the set in nearly two decades.

"You also have to remember we haven't been there," she said to King. "That time was a very specific time when we were saying goodbye to something that we didn't want to, we cared deeply about, but we knew it was the time to say goodbye. Our lives were ahead of us. We had our future ahead of us. And it almost felt like time had stopped and we time traveled."

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