It was a question that, up until that point, Aniston hadn’t worried too much about. She was an actor, had always been one—just one of those people born with the performance instinct. To her luck and/or detriment, she was also born the child of actors. Her mother, Nancy Dow, had only a handful of television credits, but her father, John Aniston, was already a frequent soap-opera actor by the time she was born, and would eventually become well known for playing Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives.31 On top of that, her godfather was Telly Savalas, a television legend and friend of her dad’s. Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, California, but her parents divorced when she was nine, and she grew up primarily with her mother, in New York City.
Aniston was sent to the Rudolf Steiner School, which used the Waldorf education method—meaning, no TV allowed. Sometimes she could barter a few hours of television, especially if she was home sick, but that only made it more thrilling to her. Sometimes she even caught a glimpse of her dad, now a rising soap star. It’s no surprise that, as Aniston’s own acting ambitions developed, they were aimed squarely at the television. She recalled: “I wanted to be in that box.”
As a New Yorker, she was a theater lover, too. Her mom took her to see Annie on Broadway, as well as shows that were less “age appropriate” but highly regarded, like Mark Medoff’s play Children of a Lesser God. By high school, she knew the acting thing wasn’t just a phase. Aniston was accepted at New York’s High School of Performing Arts (aka the Fame school), and from that point on, she said, “I didn’t think I could do anything else, honestly.” Her father was less than thrilled, knowing that committing to this profession would more than likely lead to heartbreak or, at best, great disappointment. Yes, he’d eventually found a degree of success and a steady job, but both those things were vanishingly rare. And even if she was as lucky as he, it wouldn’t inoculate her to heartbreak or struggle. By then, her parents had gone through a rough divorce, and despite having a soap-star dad, Aniston grew up perpetually broke. She’d see those girls from the Upper East Side, with their perfect clothes and their hair just so, imagining with envy what their lives must be like. It was those girls she’d think of, almost a decade later, when she saw the breakdown for a character on a new pilot she was up for: a pretty, stylish, spoiled young woman who had everything and never had to work for any of it.
But that was still years down the line. First came the receptionist job at the ad agency, and then scooping ice cream at Sedutto’s, and the two days she spent as a Manhattan bike messenger before realizing what a terrible idea that was. There were the way-off-Broadway plays and other not-quite “acting” gigs. One day when she was eighteen, she got a job reading a Nutrisystem ad on Howard Stern’s show—having no idea who Howard Stern was. (“It was quite a rude awakening, shall we say.”)
Her father now lived in LA, and every summer she’d fly out to visit him. At first she insisted she’d never actually move out there. Like so many New York actors (all New Yorkers, really), she had a sense of snobbery about Hollywood. New York was where real actors lived, honing their craft in black-box theaters, paying dues while waiting tables, and then drawing hoards to Broadway or Shakespeare in the Park. But while she loved her rinky-dink theater gigs, they didn’t pay the bills. And unlike Matt LeBlanc, who’d barely been in New York a day before booking his first commercial, she never even came close. “I couldn’t book a commercial to save my life,” she said. Even with her waitressing job, she was barely getting by. The older she got, the more she felt drawn to the west coast, where there were jobs aplenty and the streets were paved with scripts.
During her next visit with her dad, Aniston decided to extend the trip. She extended it again. Finally, she caved. She borrowed a hundred bucks from a friend to get a set of head shots, and started going out on auditions. In the meantime, she got a telemarketing gig, selling timeshare properties in the Poconos—a job at which she was terrible. “I’d just apologize profusely and hang up the phone,” she said. “Thank God that only was two weeks.” By then, she’d booked her first TV job.
Aniston costarred on Molloy, alongside Mayim Bialik (who was post-Beaches but pre-Blossom). It was canceled seven episodes in, and thus began Aniston’s four-year reign as the failed sitcom queen. And, for a while, that was fine by her. It wasn’t The Dream, but she was still getting paid to act. She’d shoot a few episodes, the show would get canned, and she’d walk away with a few months’ rent money and look for the next gig. It beat the hell out of bike messengering. But eventually Aniston realized she was going in circles, not actually making progress. She did have a few small successes along the way: a guest spot on Quantum Leap, a sketch comedy show called The Edge (which lasted for eighteen episodes), and the dubious honor of starring in Leprechaun. This film would eventually become a cult classic, and the basis for an endless series of sequels. But, like black-box theater, cult classics don’t pay the bills, either—nor do they typically pave the way for mainstream stardom. Not that it seemed in the cards for her, anyway.
“Will it ever happen for me?” Aniston asked Littlefield that night at the gas station. “God, I wanted it to,” he recalled. But he just didn’t know. Then he got a script from Kauffman and Crane.
Rachel was always going to be the hardest part to cast. Bright, Kauffman, Crane, and everyone else knew it. “The role is potentially so unlikable,” Crane said. “She’s spoiled and whiny and upset, and she’s crying, and no one likes to see that.” They auditioned everyone, said Kauffman: “Thousands and thousands of women came in.” Nothing.
In the meantime, Aniston booked another gig—not just a pilot, but a series, in which she was cast as a one of the leads. Muddling Through was shot in the winter of 1993–94, then shelved until it was scheduled as a summer series on CBS—which, if successful, could be extended into the fall. The show revolved around Connie Drego (Stephanie Hodge), a woman returning home to run her family’s motel, after doing two years in prison for shooting her cheating husband (not fatally, in the butt). Aniston played her eldest daughter, Madeline, who’d married the cop who arrested her mother. Now the whole family would have to find a way to muddle on through this awkward scenario and come together to run the motel. The show wasn’t in the same league as Friends, but it wasn’t an obvious stinker, either (certainly no LAX 2194).
Kauffman and Crane were still adamant about not casting actors in second position, but Aniston was an exception. Not because she was a big name, but the opposite—because she was indeed the failed sitcom queen. She’d done so many NBC pilots that the network knew her well, and despite her series track record, they still believed in her as an actress. Aniston already had Littlefield’s approval, meaning that, if Kauffman and Crane liked her reading, she wouldn’t have to audition for the NBC execs. That would be one less hurdle for the producers (a big one), and at this point they still hadn’t officially nailed down most of the cast. Each actor had to get the okay from them, from Warner Bros., and from the network, so until the contracts were signed, anything could change. They asked Aniston to come in and read—for the role of Monica.
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