Jennifer Aniston made a rare remark about her divorce from ex-husband Brad Pitt, 20 years after the two split.
The “Friends” star briefly spoke about the separation during a video clip filmed for Vanity Fair, shared on Monday. In the video, Aniston looked back on her work and added commentary about certain scenes.
She made a nod to Pitt when she spoke about the 2006 movie she did with Vince Vaughn, “The Break-Up.” The movie was mostly filmed in 2005, the same year that she and Pitt officially divorced.
“I might’ve just gone through a separation,” Aniston said with a laugh. “That little separation, I’m sure nobody remembers that.”
“It was kind of cathartic to go right from that [separation to the film],” she added. “So when they came to me with the offer, they were a little nervous about making the offer because they thought, ‘Oh, is that insensitive? Is it inappropriate?’ But I actually thought, ‘What a great opportunity.’”
Aniston said she knew taking the role would “actually kind of benefit me emotionally, just as a human being, and also serve the script and the character pretty well.”
In her print interview with the magazine, she also touched on “the love triangle” narrative that followed her during her split from Pitt. Pitt infamously left Aniston for his “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” co-star, Angelina Jolie.
What came next was a “vulnerable time” for Aniston, she said.
“It was such juicy reading for people. If they didn’t have their soap operas, they had their tabloids,” Aniston said, adding that it was a “shame” the media circus “had to happen, but it happened. And boy did I take it personally.”
Jolie and Pitt went on to marry in 2014, before separating in 2016. The couple’s contentious divorce dragged on for eight years, before it was finalized in 2024.
Aniston also moved on, and remarried fellow actor Justin Theroux. The two later split in 2017.