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Now, you know how that story turned out, but what if Aniston had said yes to Lorne Michaels and the SNL crew? Well, in typical Jen fashion, it didn’t go down the way anyone expected. In fact, she practically turned SNL down with a side of boldness and sass.
“I remember walking in, and it was [David] Spade and Sandler, and I knew those guys forever, and I was so young and dumb and I went into Lorne’s office and I was like, ‘I hear women are not respected on this show,’” Jennifer Aniston recalled. Yep, she didn’t exactly hold back. She kept going, telling Lorne that she preferred the “good old days” of Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin. Not exactly what you’d expect from someone walking into the office of the man who made SNL a cultural juggernaut. “Who the f— was I to say this to Lorne Michaels?” she joked later. Classic Aniston—blunt and a little bit hilarious.
At the time, Jennifer wasn’t yet the household name she would become. She had a few TV shows under her belt, but none of them had taken off. Friends was still in the “could go either way” phase when she turned down SNL. In fact, she was coming off four failed TV shows and probably wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect of another gamble in sketch comedy. Enter Adam Sandler, who was already on SNL. Sandler was so sure Aniston was a perfect fit for the show, he even told Oprah about the moment he saw her walking into Lorne’s office. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Aniston. Is she about to be on our show?’ When I found out she turned it down for Friends, I was like, ‘What the hell is Friends?’”
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