In case you haven't yet heard, an epic event took place on television last week: Jimmy Kimmel got three of the Friends cast members to reunite on his show and read some terrible fanfiction he wrote. Since we're apparently not ever going to have an official reunion, any time the cast gets together, fans get a kick out of it. Unfortunately though — and confusingly — some fans took the Kimmel sketch so seriously that they think Jennifer Aniston was actually angry to be dragged into this. The backlash has apparently gotten so ridiculous that Kimmel himself was prompted to speak out in defense of it: So, once and for all, Jimmy Kimmal wants you to know that Jennifer Aniston was game for that Friends reunion sketch. She was just acting annoyed, obviously, because she's just a really good actress.
The premise of the skit is that, while Jennifer Aniston is being interviewed by Kimmel, he suggests they do a reading of his Friends fanfiction. She agrees, but that's before she finds out that the fanfic involves him as Ross and her as Rachel as they discuss how good he is at lovemaking. Aniston is reticent to participate, and flat out refuses to wear a Rachel wig, calling the whole charade stupid. Then, when the big reveal of Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow goes down, she isn't even cheered up by their presence.
I thought it was pretty obvious that she was just playing annoyed throughout the sketch; Cox and Kudrow were acting peeved as well. After all, It's pretty common knowledge that everything that happens on these shows is decided ahead of time — they're not just gonna let celebrities loose on live TV without prepared talking points, jokes, and yes, sketches. PR reps alone would have a fit.
Unfortunately, as usual a few people took things too seriously, and Kimmel was left having to defend the sketch and Aniston's participation in it:
It was acting. Everybody knew it was gonna happen, we rehearsed it backstage, it was scripted out. The idea was that I would force Jennifer into this mini Friends reunion, and she pretended to be annoyed by it.
Kimmel seemed genuinely baffled to have to explain to many upset commenters that he didn't force Aniston to do anything against her will. "It's weird, 99 percent of the time you put something on Youtube and everyone jumps in to say it's fake," he mused. "Then we put on something that is, I thought, obviously fake and people think it's real!"
Do I think that his Friends reunion shouldn't have relied so much on Aniston's annoyance? Yes. But her acting was so convincing that, like Kimmel suggested, we should give this woman an Emmy. She's fooled the Internet.
Image: ABC; ayudapatusrecursos/Tumblr
