Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler were on Oprah yesterday to promote Just Go With It, which comes out next weekend. They were surprisingly cute together – Adam and Jennifer did a lot of their junket interviews together, and they have a very easy chemistry together, and you can tell they enjoy each other’s company. Apparently, they’ve been friends for 20 years, although I couldn’t really understand the story Adam told about how they first got to know each other. Something about a friend in common and matzah and Aniston coming to see Adam do stand-up? Something like that. Also: I love LOVE that Adam Sandler only refers to her as “Aniston”. For some reason, that cracks me up. Never “Jen” or “Jennifer”. Always “Aniston”.
During the course of the interview, some new information came up that I found interesting. Well, it’s new information to me. Maybe some of you already knew it. Sandler claimed that before Friends got picked up (probably around the spring of 1994), Aniston came in to meet Lorne Michaels, and she was offered a cast position on Saturday Night Live. Sandler said: “We wanted Aniston to be on the show with us. I remember being on the ninth floor where [SNL exec] Lorne Michaels’ office was, and seeing Jen come in. I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Aniston. Is she about to be on our show?'” Aniston then confirmed that she did get an offer, and said that she had said “no” because she believed in Friends, and thought the show was going places, although everyone thought she was making a huge mistake by turning down the SNL offer.
It was a nice little “what if?” moment – what if Aniston had joined SNL? Well, she probably would have had to get out of the contract when Friends got picked up, so it would have been the same anyway. But Aniston could have been Ana Gasteyer! Perish the thought.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
She isn’t very funny and her timing would have been terrible plus the availability of drugs on SNL would have sent her to the gutter in no time. She chose well when she went to Friends. Better directing on that show helped her to learn to “act”. Yeah, yeah. Not a fan of Anniston. Don’t dislike her just find her and her movies beyond boring.
I want those boots
Kaiser – I love you but there is entirely too many posts about Jennifer Anniston here, seriously! It’s like the 7th since yesterday!!! She does NOTHING and she is SO boring!!! Stop posting about her! PLEASE.
Wow, I’m surprised – I recently listened to a bunch of interviews of SNL cast and former hopefuls, and the basic consensus was that it was/is REALLY hard to get on that show. I wouldn’t have expected that, but I have to say I’m impressed, just based on what others have said about the audition process for SNL.
Clearly she made the right choice though.
Aniston’s got gorgeous hair. And I wonder what is going through that dudes mind who is standing behind Aniston in the trailer photo.
I love JA – I’m always interested in seeing new pics of her, hearing new details about her . . .and I love the boots!!
I’m guessing the Aniston hate will start in… 3, 2, 1…
Love those boots she’s wearing!!!
I want those boots.
Those boots are definitely awesome.
I didn’t know she and Adam Sandler had been friends so long. Totally random.
Saturday Night Live is a really hard job to get, curious that Jennifer really had a chance with it.
She made a sensible choice. SNL stopped being funny midway through the third season.
That show would have been worse than ever with her on the cast; she can’t really act as anyone other than Jennifer Aniston.
Her movies are just as bad as the SNL movies, so that sounds about right.
Aniston is working on a project with Lifetime called “Five for the Cure,” along with her producing partner Kristin Hahn, Paula Wagner, and Marta Kauffman. The project will consist of five short films linked by the common thread of current issues women deal with on their paths to surviving breast cancer. In addition to executive-producing, Aniston will direct one of the short films. “It sounds maudlin, but it’s actually light and inspiring,” she said. “We start in April.” The project is scheduled to air in October.
http://www.wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/jennifer-anistons-fragrance-launches-in-us-3458685?module=today
Rather like the Aniston fawning, Sassy.
Who cares, Olivia.
This doesn’t surprise me. ‘Aniston’ isn’t given enough credit for her comedic acting skills.
Good to see a positive post about her:)
@olivia – thanks for posting that tidbit, very interesting.
smartest thing she ever did (because everything after friends was pretty much meh)
I don’t know if her career would have gotten any farther, but you learn some great acting skills collaborating in an improv setting. I think she made the right choice, but she would have been a better actress if she’d gone the other way.
I’m not surprised,Aniston has great timing and she is much better on the small screen than the big screen. I don’t think she isn’t talented but I do think she plays it safe and relies on her hair and body and likability. I don’t think she’s willing to ugly it up like the truly great SNL ladies.
no way.
@ ANON
Speak for yourself! I like her and obviously so do others. That doesn’t mean to say I like all of her movies. Some of them are bombs. But I’m interested in what she’s doing and what she’s wearing. I think she’s got great style.
As others have said before…..you dont have to read about her. Simply ignore the thread.
Thanks for that story Olivia. 🙂
wow-i think JA is actually funny….more like marisa tomei…and she should hve followed that route and studied the great comedic actors like martin, tomlin, etc.
but anyway, i also liked, office space (c’mon!) rumor has it and friend with money-thought JA did her best work in these films….and yes, she is only good in an ensemble;no she doesn’t open films…so what? that doesn’t make her completely sucky. opening films alone would put alot of actors out of work, if it were the only criteria.
no, she is not a great actor…but she is funny IMO. there’s nothing to hate ab out her, even if she does whitewash her image for the mainstream. she is too harmless for me to be irritated with.
She has zero comedic timing and can’t act her way out of a paper bag. SNL is humourless trash. She would have been good for it.
skibunny, calm down, Anon is allowed to have their opinion without you trying to police them. And what style? Aniston HAS *NO* style. Wearing jeans, high heels/boots and tops all the time isn’t stylish. She is one of the least smart and classy styled celebs their are. She is boring and has had the same style for 15 years. She thinks transforming herself is…. not wearing mascara. Face it; she is boring with no style.
i’ve heard that she auditioned for snl, but the story was that she didn’t get it. idk.
@lrm I love Office Space it’s a classic film but I don’t think Aniston was more than a foil in that one that movie was all about the supporting cast. She was great in Friends with Money.
She has the best clothes.
@ Sami
What are you talking about? Policing?
Yes! People have a right to their opinion. That’s kinda what I was saying. I just read your comments on another thread. Wow! You are letting your blind hatred of Jennifer Aniston obscure your comprehension skills.
AND
Hypocritical much?
Kaiser, i’m just putting this out there, but could “Sami” just be Salem on another IP address…:-O
Not hard to get on SNL at all. They go through alot of cast members. If you are remotely funny and Lorne likes you your in.
She isnt a good comedic actress though and would probably have been off SNL within a few yrs so she made right decision staying on Friends(obviously =)
I remember seeing her on a sketch comedy show before friends and she was very funny on it. She wasn’t famous yet, but she really stood out, imo. I wish I could remember the name of the show. Off to imdb, I guess.
“Not hard to get on SNL at all.” Seriously? I agree the quality of the show isn’t great, but it has been and still is one of the most competitively sought after jobs in comedy. A lot of comedians and actors have auditioned and been turned down, including Jim Carrey. I don’t know whether JA would have been any good in it or not, but being offered a spot on it is an accomplishment.
She looks really good with her hair being that shade of blonde, and not just all those wacked out highlights and different layers. It helps soften her features.
I hope she keeps it looking like that.
And I’m glad she went on Friends than SNL. She probably wouldn’t have made it long on SNL. Though she was pretty funny when she did voice acting on that episode of South Park.
SNL stopped being funny midway through the third season.
Really? The THIRD season? In 1977? Yeah, it hasn’t been the best lately but defiantly been funny since 1977.
Anyway… I don’t think she is anywhere near funny enough for SNL
@Cherry Rose: I agree that she was hilarious on SP — I didn’t even realize it was her until after the fact. That entire episode is one of my all time favorites.
maybe thats the real reason Brad left Jen… he found out she really has hazel eyes and a nose job and wanted to know what kind of milk the cow he was buying was going to produce…
She was one of the funnier SNL hosts the two times she did it. Would have been great I’m sure, and that’s not just because I want to nail her.
I don’t care about this story but I have to say two things:
1- I want to eat those boots, not because I’m a shoe fetishist but because of that chocolate colour… I need an intravenous injection of chocolate, damn it;
2- being a comedy actor/actress is way more difficult than to be a dramatic actor/actress: everybody can be believable in tragedies because every one of has experienced tragedies, a horse of a different colour is to be able to make people laugh in a believable way, to fake a laugh is harder than to burst into (fake) tears.
That’s why in general I have the tendency to consider good an actor who’s able to make me smile.
Example: Adam Sandler is totally un-funny, but he was quite credible in “Punch-drunk love”, a sentimental drama directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
“I remember seeing her on a sketch comedy show before friends and she was very funny on it. She wasn’t famous yet, but she really stood out, imo. I wish I could remember the name of the show. Off to imdb, I guess.”
@Kaye1: the show you’re talking about was The Edge. Jennifer was on it with the guy who played Newman on Seinfeld and Julie Brown amongst others. A lot of people on here knock her as not being funny, but she certainly does have great comedic timing – she was cast in several sitcoms before Friends, including a sketch comedy show (youtube has clips), got Friends within hours of auditioning even though she was already contracted to another sitcom – something that rarely ever happens because the network would have been screwed if the other sitcom had been picked up. The creators of Friends even discussed this when Friends ended – how they wanted her enough to take the risk. She won a SAG, Emmy and Golden Globe for her work on Friends, and now we hear that she had been offered a job on SNL – straight from Sandler himself. Luck only gets you so far – the people who are casting and working in the industry clearly know that she has talents in this area. And she has worked with most of the big male comedy stars and they all have gushed about her abilities to improv and keep up with them comedically.
“I agree the quality of the show isn’t great, but it has been and still is one of the most competitively sought after jobs in comedy. A lot of comedians and actors have auditioned and been turned down, including Jim Carrey. I don’t know whether JA would have been any good in it or not, but being offered a spot on it is an accomplishment.”
@lucy2: Completely agree. Who knows how things would have turned out. From the clips of The Edge and Jennifer’s own appearances on SNL she certainly has shown she could have been great on it. Still, I think she made the right choice. Regardless, the fact that she was offered a spot is very impressive. As you said, it is well documented as being very difficult and competitive to get on that show.
“being a comedy actor/actress is way more difficult than to be a dramatic actor/actress”
@Solveig: So true. Actors themselves acknowledge this all the time. Meryl Streep – known to be one of the greatest living actresses – has gone on record saying that just to be likeable, funny and make people laugh realistically on screen is the hardest job as an actor even though it can look deceptively easy when done by someone skilled.
I found her timing and mannerisms on Friends so annoying. It was to the point where I couldn’t watch the show.
But I’m ashamed to admit that I jumped on the “leave her ALONE!!!” bandwagon when Pitt dumped her.
Meh, she seems fairly harmless but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of her movies besides Office Space. As someone already pointed out, anyone could have played that role.
But still…. LEAVE HER ALONE!!! 😛
Thanks for the nice post about her Kaiser. Sami, there are a lot of breast cancer survivors out there so obviously someone does care. Thanks for the post, Olivia.
Surprised that she was offered an SNL spot. Not saying she’s not good at comedy (after all the romcom is what she does 95% of the time) but she’s not the most versatile. Most of her characters are one note, that might not be her fault but….
she is looking great as usual, I too love the boots.
The use of ‘Aniston’ by Sandler suggests she’s considered almost one of the boys. A nice touch by him and am almost as surprised at that as the SNL offer.
I know everyone on this blog has varying levels of dislike for Aniston, but I always thought her comic timing on Friends was pretty solid.
I bet a lot of people disagree with me on that, but whatever.
Matt, I think she has a good comic timing, but I’m not a fan of rom-coms in general so I can’t say that I like her, but what I dislike of JA is the fact that she never tries to make something different and I know she can, because she was good in “The good girl” and “Friends with money”. But always playing the same character is a fault of many actors, lately.
Anyway I too don’t get this hatred towards this woman.
It feels incredibly hard to be picked for SNL when you are the one trying out. The cast members have usually spent years earning the right to try out/be asked to try out. Comedic directors, that I have known, say that Jennifer Aniston has excellent comedic timing.
I have never gotten the ire, here, for JA. I usually avoid even reading about her on this site. There are so many posts about her, however, that I pop in now and then.
Certainly, comedy styles are a matter of taste. She may not be your taste for comedy, but that does not make here bad at what she does.
I for one completely agree with “Solveig” and “Anon”@ 8:02pm…
Aniston has a good comedic timing and she was one of the reasons i was hooked on FRIENDS for years. She may not be a good drama actor but comedy is MUCH harder than drama IMO.
Not that all the serious actors are bad, I’m just saying it’s not for everyone! And there have been many great actors over the years who didn’t win any Oscars and such but are good actors nonetheless. So that’s no criteria in my eyes.
She’s cute and can be funny. If only she would choose her roles more wisely!
I get sick of the same stuff that she keeps doing. I think she’s good at comedy but she’s been good in some darker roles and should take more chances.
Christ, leave it to Aniston to refer to a film about breast cancer as sounding “maudlin.”
Then again, if she throws the word “retard” around so easily, we can’t really expect that she’d have the emotional depth to really take breast cancer as anything but an opportunity to get more fame by association. Maybe she’s missing a sensitivity chip or something.