Jennifer Aniston Talks Friends Reunion Nightmare, Casting Conan O'Brien as "The Naked Guy"

Blond beauty also shares how her role was almost recast on the hit sitcom

By Alyssa Toomey Aug 09, 2013 7:04 PMTags

Can you believe it's been 19 years since Friends first aired?!

Don't worry, neither can Jennifer Aniston!

The blond beauty appeared on Conan O'Brien's talk show Thursday night, where the twosome recalled their first meeting back in 1994 before the hit NBC show began. 

And in addition to the funnyman admitting he initially had no faith in the wildly-popular program, Justin Theroux's fiancée dished on her Friends reunion nightmare as well as her dream recasting for Coco.

NBC

"We were at the Regal Royale with Lisa Kudrow," Jen remembers.

"Right," Conan replies. "And I have been lifelong friend with Lisa Kudrow and she said ‘I'm launching this new show with my friend Jennifer Aniston' and I was like ‘Good luck with that,' he admits. "And I said ‘This isn't going anywhere kids.'"

The good news: He didn't place any bets on his prediction (we hope!).

The conversation then turned to the endless Friends reunion rumors, and O'Brien shares how Kudrow told him she almost began to believe the rampant false reports.

Twitter

"I heard that story, and oddly enough, I had a dream last night that that actually happened to me," the 44-year-old actress says. "That I saw, I read it in the paper that the Friends reunion was happening and I just didn't get called. Isn't that weird?" 

She continues, noting how the viral story made her a bit unnerved.

"I think it created that anxiety of like, ‘What if that did happen?' and they're all cooking up a show, like a Thanksgiving episode, which I always thought were my favorites, and ‘What happened to Rachel?!'" she exclaims.

But when Conan suggests a fictional Rachel recasting, Aniston admits there's a great deal of truth to his tale.

"That almost happened though, you know, at the very beginning of Friends," the blond beauty says of recasting her iconic character. "They actually had girls auditioning because I was double booked on a television show. I was doing another show, and then CBS picked that show up...for three episodes," she confesses. "We were doing our first promo shots and I had to stand out of a bunch of them, just in case they had to slot somebody else in."

While Aniston sadly reminded the audience that the show is indeed over ("unless someone invents a time machine!"), she had no qualms casting Conan in a role on the hit sitcom.

"I don't think you'd do Leblanc. Maybe Schwim or Chandler," she says as she continues to ponder. "No…maybe ‘The Naked Guy'"

Where's that time machine when we need it?!