Jennifer Aniston breaks down in tears when asked about Friends as she reflects on the show

Jennifer Aniston broke down during an interview about the 30th anniversary of Friends.

It has been a difficult time for the New York cast who lost actor Matthew Perry last year in a shock incident.

Perhaps the closest to Perry was Aniston, who previously mentioned having kept in contact with the Chandler actor since ending the sitcom in 2004.

He even went on to reference her in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing which was released in 2022.

Within it, he hailed Aniston as his crush and admitted to have been ‘immediately taken’ by her when he met her through mutual friends three years before they were cast to be co-stars.

He wrote: “Looking back, it was clear that [she thought] I liked her too much, or in the wrong kind of way... and I only compounded the error by then asking her out.

“She declined (which made it very difficult to actually go out with her), but said that she’d love to be friends with me.”

The friendship lasted nearly 30 years, with the pair texting back and forth on a regular basis, with Perry always making Aniston laugh.

This relationship was encapsulated when Aniston was interviewed by Quinta Brunson for Variety.

The 55-year-old was asked about her time on the show, which immediately made the actress tear up.

“Oh God, don’t make me cry,” said the actress.

“I won’t,” Brunson responded, adding: “But you’re already crying, do you want a minute? We don’t have to talk about it.”

The thought of the show likely brought back pain as her friend had recently died due to the ‘acute effects of ketamine’ in October.

She explained with a happy memory of her and Perry why she was emotional about reminiscing: “It’s so strange to even think that it’s 30 years old.

“I remember the day that it was going to premiere.

“Me and Matthew Perry were having lunch somewhere and we knew that Lisa [Kudrow] was getting her hair coloured.

“So we ran to the hair salon and I snuck up and she was in the sink hair bowl, and I took the nozzle and, like, just started washing her hair.

“And it definitely flew out of control and that was unfortunate.

“But the excitement we had, it feels like yesterday.”

This bittersweet heartbreak is something that she has shared before, in an Instagram post dedicated to the memory of her friend.

She wrote: “He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the six of us.

"This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be.

“For Matty, he KNEW he loved to make people laugh. As he said himself, if he didn’t hear the ‘laugh’ he thought he was going to die.

"His life literally depended on it. And, boy, did he succeed in doing just that. He made all of us laugh. And laugh hard.

“In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been poring over our texts to one another. Laughing and crying then laughing again. I’ll keep them forever and ever.”