On Saturday, Jennifer Aniston celebrated the 59th birthday of her former Friends co-star and bestie, Lisa Kudrow, with some fun throwback pics. The 53-year-old actress tagged her friend with a birthday wish in her Instagram Stories, sharing a picture from 2003 taken at the 29th People’s Choice Awards.
In the next slide, she wrote, “I love you,” over a GIF from their show playing Rachel Green and Phoebe Buffay, jumping up and down screaming.
In the last picture, it looks like one of Aniston’s blurry private selfies in which she is giving Kudrow a kiss. She added some affectionate emojis for emphasis.
The two women worked together for 10 years from 1994 to 2004. The group had a brief reunion in early 2021, and Aniston admitted in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that it brought up a lot of unexpected feelings and memories of the difficulties she faced as the show ended.
“I think we were just so naive walking into it, thinking, ‘How fun is this going to be? They’re putting the sets back together, exactly as they were.’ Then you get there and it’s like, ‘Oh right, I hadn’t thought about what was going on the last time I was actually here,’” Aniston said. “It just took me by surprise because it was like, ‘Hi, past, remember me? Remember how that sucked? You thought everything was in front of you and life was going to be just gorgeous and then you went through maybe the hardest time in your life?’”
She added, “It was all very jarring and, of course, you’ve got cameras everywhere and I’m already a little emotionally accessible, I guess you could say. I had to walk out at certain points. I don’t know how they cut around it.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.