Can you imagine anyone else playing Rachel Green besides Jennifer Aniston? Well, according to the Friends star, that was actually almost the case.
The Just Go With It actress recently shared the surprising fact during an episode of the SiriusXM show, Gayle King in The House. Aniston revealed to host Gayle King when she auditioned for the role of Rachel that Friends director James Burrows warned her that the 1994 series she was already appearing in, Muddling Through, would get picked up for another season "just to spite this show." If the series did in fact, get picked up, it put her casting as Rachel in serious jeopardy.
"Sure enough, they [the show] actually did," Aniston confirmed. "They picked it up just for three episodes. And so that's when other girls—and then Friends sort of had a moment of, ‘Ooh, we should start just having a backup for Rachel.'"
Not only did word get out that the hit show may be in need of a possible replacement for Aniston, but the 52-year-old producer also shared that she started receiving calls from people quite close to the star. As Aniston explained, "I remember my friends calling me saying, ‘I'm auditioning for Rachel. Will you help me with the...' And I was like, what? What?"
The actress then made the life-changing decision to ask a producer if she could step out of her role of playing Madeline Cooper on the short-lived series to star as Rachel Green instead. However, before the A-lister was able to begin her role on the classic sitcom, her former producer shared a few choice words that would later prove to be tremendously wrong.
"That's when he said, ‘I've seen that show Friends, I saw that show,'" Aniston recalled. "I saw the pilot. That's not going to make you a star. This show will make you a star.' And then the rest is history."
History is absolutely the right word when it comes to describing the ten-year run of the classic NBC show. Not only did Friends prove to be a massive hit at the time of its initial run, but the show has become such a staple in pop culture that their recent HBO Max reunion was an event most fans have been anticipating for years.
Looks like the grass was truly greener on the other side.