Jennifer Aniston Recalls Past Struggles While Filming 'Friends: The Reunion'

Jennifer Aniston remembers her younger years during the set of "Friends: The Reunion."

The 52-year-old actress got emotional ahead of the long-awaited reunion with HBO this year. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she shared what it was like stepping into the set and that it was not as joyous as many thought it would be.

"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 recalled.

She added, "And 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?' 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, so I had to walk out at certain points. I don’t know how they cut around it."

Although she agreed to do the reunion, along with her other cast members, "The Morning Show" star admitted that it was mostly because of the director.

"Enter [director] Ben Winston. We were all like, 'I don’t know if we were just seduced by his talent or his charm or a combination of all of it.' Even the boys were like, 'D-mn, I’m kind of in love with the guy. Like, I don’t know if I said yes because it’s good or because he’s so gorgeous.' Whatever it was, we all said yes, so," she explained.

Despite the bad memories, Aniston said she and her castmates had "so much fun together."

She continued, "I remember that was one of the things when we were young and dumb and renegotiating, one of the [studio’s] threats was, 'Well, we don’t need all six of you. We can do this with four of you.' We were like, 'What? You can? You can get rid of Rachel or Joey or who?”' Then it was like, 'No they can’t, wake up.'"

After the series, Aniston has been extremely blessed in her career, and she's very grateful for it.

"I didn’t know what was coming, and that’s been nothing but blessed. It’s a different caliber of work but I love it, no matter what, even if it’s a terribly reviewed, dumb comedy, it doesn’t matter if it brings me joy," Aniston said. "It was more personal stuff that I had expectations about that sort of shape-shifted, so to speak. That was what was jarring, that we all had an idea of what the future was going to be and we were going to go hunker down and focus on this or that and then it all just changed overnight, and that was it. But again, everything’s a blessing if you’re able to look at life’s ups and downs in that way. And if it all hadn’t happened, I would not be sitting here the woman that I am."