Jennifer Aniston turned down 'SNL' audition in her 20s because 'it was such a boys' club'
Before getting her big break on Friends the world was almost introduced to Jennifer Aniston in an entirely different way — live from New York. The 50-year-old actress nearly auditioned for Saturday Night Live in her 20s, but turned down the opportunity because she didn't like the way women were being represented on the show.
"I didn’t think I would like that environment," Aniston recalled to Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show. "And I remember showing up and [Adam] Sandler was there and [David] Spade was there, and I’d known them already and they were like, 'Look, Aniston’s here!'" The actress met Sandler and Spade "when I was 20, 21, after I’d done a television show with a guy who knew them."
SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels asked Aniston to come in for a meeting. She has "no memory" of how he got her name.
"I just went to talk with him," she remembered, "and I was such a young twit. I was like, 'I think that women need to be treated better here.' Because it was such a boys’ club."
Michaels wasn't amused by Aniston's feedback.
"You’re just, not the brightest when you’re in your early 20s," she added, noting, "I didn’t lecture [him], I was just saying what I would hope if I was to do this, what I would hope it to be."
Instead of auditioning for SNL, Aniston decided to do a little TV show called Friends. Not only did it launch her to stardom, but gave her real friends for life. Aniston told Stern she and co-stars Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc all had dinner Saturday at Cox's house.
"We just had dinner this week, the whole gang," she revealed. "Everyone was there. ... Schwimmer was in town and we all happened to have a window of time, so we all got together. Oh my God, we laughed so hard.
"We all miss it every day," she added. "I would be nothing without it."
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