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Jennifer Aniston 2019 & Jennifer Aniston 1994

Awkward Conversation

Jennifer Aniston Told To Lose 30 Lbs. Or She Wouldn’t Get ‘Friends’

The actress shed the weight and became Rachel Green.

Jennifer Aniston 2019 & Jennifer Aniston 1994

Credit: INSTARImages / Shutterstock

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Twenty-five years ago this month, Friends premiered on NBC, making Jennifer Aniston an instant household name. But in the months before the show debuted, it wasn’t at all clear that Jennifer, now 50, would get the part of Rachel Green. In fact, her agent told her she had to lose 30 pounds or she would lose her shot at the role of a lifetime.

The weight loss request was discussed in a new book, Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era. Before the hit show, Jennifer’s resume included the Ferris Bueller TV show and a failed Fox sitcom, Molloy. She was still looking for her big, breakout hit.

“She had to lose thirty pounds if she wanted to stay in Hollywood,” author Saul Austerlitz wrote. “Los Angeles was a tough place to be an actress — it was a tough place to be a woman — and Jennifer Aniston’s agent was reluctantly leveling with her.”

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