PrimeTime Thursday Interview with Diane Sawyer, January 2004

(Transcript by Kristin Jaklitsch)

Diane’s Intro: She’s the famous sitcom star. Or as her theme song would say, of the week, month or even the year. She has a new movie, FRIENDS last season, the pinch-yourself reality of Brad Pitt as her husband. But as much as we see her, we don’t really know what’s under that famous skin. (some FRIENDS clips are played throughout this) It’s hard to believe she’s been making us laugh for 10 years. The fresh face girl every woman in America wanted to be. The funny girl every man in America would hope move next door. Yet back in 1994, she was just one of the tiny tribe of unknown actors. Walking onto stage 5 of Warner Brothers lot, Aniston, only 24, already bore the scars of 3 cancelled series. But everything changed that first night she made her appearance into Central Perk. (clip of pilot is aired) Quirky, high-strung Rachel wandering into the lives of her new best friends.

Jen: (just watched the clip). God. “Monica, Hi!” Why do they talk up here? That whole show I noticed I was talking up here.

Diane: Nervous?

Jen: I must’ve been.

Diane: (Voice Over) Flash forward a season to episode 31. Memory lane.

Jen: Memory lane. ( a clip of TOW Ross finds out/the famous CP kiss plays)

Diane: (Voice over) A romance begins and a romantic duel. A retreat, leading to that historic first kiss with Ross.

Jen: Wow. I forgot how powerful that little scene was.

Diane: Days now till the final episode is taped.

Jen: Yep.

Diane: Have you thought about the morning after?

Jen: God. No. I’m just hoping I’ll get through the night, you know.

DVO: Just say the word FRIENDS and to her dismay, the tears begin.

Jen: I’m a fan. (claps) Yeeps. I should have a shock thing around my neck, like when those dogs start to bark, when I start to cry I’m just electrocuted.

DVO: No matter, she has plenty to distract her, a new movie, Along Came Polly. She’s a free-spirited Polly who loosens up a strait laced Ben Stiller. Think The Odd Couple meets Something About Mary.

Diane: What is your threshold on disorder jokes? Are you an easy laugh?

Jen: I’m such an easy laugh. I’m the one with the fart machines. I make a big fool out of myself laughing ridiculously hard. (clip of TOW Barry & Mindy’s wedding plays with her bridesmaid dress stuck in her underwear)

DVO: (a clip of TOW Ross’s Wedding when Rachel see Ross & Emily together plays) It’s one of her great strengths that even when the laughs are broad, something about her stays mysterious. Is she a little bruised by life or seriously shy? Sitting with us, she’s utterly charming but also a little restless about to run away.

Jen: I’m absolutely uncomfortable. I mean, you couldn’t be sweeter and kinder. I’m just….

Diane: Miserable right now?

Jen: Not miserable, I don’t know.

DVO: And reigning cover star of so many magazines stays “Whatever you see on camera, don’t be fooled.” The little girl with pudgy cheeks and frizzy hair still lives on inside.

Jen: The fact that all of a sudden I become a hair - what do you call it?

Diane: Thing.

Jen: Thing - kinda ridiculous. I never had good hair. It was frizzy and kinky and purple and blue and awful.

DVO: Until 10 years ago, she was an obsessive dieter.

Jen: I was always a yoyo dieter. I was a chubbier kid.

Diane: Did you do drastic things to diet?

Jen: Was I anorexic or bulimic? No. I was a diet-aholic, definitely. There was the watermelon diet, the white grain of rice diet.

DVO: But these days, she works out 3-4 days a week and makes eating about life now, not in the past. A father, who broke up with a violate mother.

Jen: I just wanna say to all the young girls, there are so many struggles everyone has. You don’t know what you’re filling up. Is it the void of your father leaving? Is it your fear of failure? Is it I’ll never be thing or as beautiful as you, whoever you are. Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kinda falls into place.

Diane: What do you love about yourself?

Jen: I love a lot about myself.

Diane: Let me count the ways.

Jen: I’m a good problem solver and a good mediator. What else do I like about myself? I’m not a yeller. I like that. Worked hard on it, not to be a yeller.

DVO: (movie clips play now as Diane talks about Jen’s movies) From Bruce Almighty to Rockstar, Aniston’s insecurities are transformed into stunning confidence as an actor. (The Good Girl Clip) This is that quiet little movie, The Good Girl. She won critical rave as a clerk in a discount store, wandering into adultery in a one way life that could only circle back.

Jen: My instinct right away was fearless, I have to do this. Then the fear sets in, you know. I don’t mind not having a lot of confidence and that sounds really weird but I like my stumbling, it leads me to great places. I’m intimidated by really confident people. I like people that are - have a little bit- who ask questions who aren’t so sure. I’m not riddled with fear, I feel comfortable. I’m sounding like a big old scaredy cat.

Diane: You’re not even confident of your fear.

Jen: I’m not confident of my fear.

Diane: At one point, I think Matthew Perry said something about you, (They show the Oprah clip with Matthew saying the following about Jen), “And Jenny, you know, Jenny’s a really hard worker, being very sweet and stuff, has had some stuff in her life she had to address and [snaps fingers] she has. Right in front of us, we’ve all gotten to see Jen blossom into this beautiful woman.” (goes back to the interview) What was it?

Jen: Everybody has their demons to sort of wrestle with. Nothing out of ordinary. I mean, there’s a lot of problems out there greater than mine. But you know stuff.

Diane: You look as if this hurts.

Jen: I do?

Diane: Yeah, you do.

DVO: When we come back, loneliness, meeting Brad, and the anguish over the central relationship in her life.

[Commercial break]

DVO: We interviewed Aniston in a hotel suite over looking all of her hometown, Manhattan. Landmarks for a girl that never dreamed ahead.

Jen: I went to school over there (Fiorello Highschool of Music & Performing Arts)

Diane: You lived up there.

Jen: Yep, 92nd and Columbus

Diane: Jackson Hole, where you waitressed.

Jen: Yep, 85th and Columbus.

Diane: Were you a good waitress?

Jen: I wasn’t a very graceful waitress but had a lot of customers.

DVO: She even did telemarketing.

Diane: What kind of telemarketing did you do?

Jen: [laughs] It was for time shares in the Poconos. I was awful because I felt so terrible that I was interrupting their dinner. They would yell and scream at me and I’d apologize profusely and hang up. I didn’t make any money.

DVO: Last year, former waitress and telemarketer topped the Forbes list of most powerful celebrities in Hollywood with a salary of reported at $35 million a year.

Diane: Are you good with money?

Jen: Yeah and I like to spend it, but I’m good with it. I do remember saying though I will never be financially dependent on a man.

DVO: A lesson she learned from her mom, Nancy, a former model; her father a Greek born actor, John Aniston. In earlier years, she said it was a home filled with laughter.

Diane: What was your favorite memory growing up?

Jen: My favorite memory growing up was when they’d have poker parties cause my dad was and still is on a soap opera. And their actor friends would come and sing songs around the piano, play games, play charades. They were just funny - fun people.

DVO: Like her godfather, Greek Terry Salvas. But when Aniston was 9 years old, she came home to an emotional knockout. As she remembers it, her mother simply announced her father had left. She and her mother were on their own.

Diane: That’s how you found out?

Jen: Yep. From a birthday party. It was quick. There one minute and boom. I think it was like ripping off a band-aid - probably easier that way then - you know, so it was pretty quick.

DVO: For an entire year, her father pretty much vanished from her life, pursuing a new relationship and it seems Aniston’s wounds were hidden by her new role as class clown. Rebellion came later. Wild hair, too much makeup.

Jen: I tried to cover up as much of myself as I could.

Diane: Were you lonely?

Jen: Yeah, I’ll always have a thread of that in my life, feeling lonely, not a sad lonely, but - I like it.

DVO: At home, vulnerability of a classic beauty, pointing out her daughter’s eyes were too close together, her nose too big.

Jen: She was doing me a favor helping me out by telling me these things. Giving me helpful beauty tips. It wasn’t saying about “This is what your problem is. This is how you can help that.” That’s probably why I wore so much makeup. My mom was like - wore makeup. Beautiful, beautiful exquisite woman - she doesn’t need it.

DVO: But she says she and her mom were joined at the hip until the mid 90’s. By now, the awkward duckling was a superstar and was in a desperate fight to have some privacy in her life. She says her mother gave an interview to a tabloid show and than later in 1999 wrote a book about raising her now famous daughter. To Aniston, it seemed like the kind of exploitation that even your friends avoid. It would cause a bitter eight year rupture that lasts to this day. Aniston refused to read her mother’s book and hadn’t seen the photos from it, the ones I had sitting in my lap.

Jen: Oh my God, where did you get that?

Diane: I got that out of the book she wrote.

Jen: Oh Jesus, I never looked at it.

Diane: Look at those others. [Jen starts to cry]

Jen: Wow. I never saw this. I’m sorry. See? Was she gorgeous?

Diane: Absolutely gorgeous. You said, “My mom is very warm, loving, nurturing, wise and old-fashioned. And when it got rough out there in terms of the career going, she was the one that said keep going.”

Jen: Yeah. She did. And she is all those things. She made a mistake and I don’t think she knew any better, obviously.

Diane: But are you surprised at yourself that you…

Jen: Can’t let it go?

Diane: Transform it. Redeem it.

Jen: I definitely tried. I made the efforts and it started that stubborn thing - well I tried. I tried enough. It’s your turn, you know, and so that’s where we are and like I said, we’re sort of standing in all our corners, waiting for the other to approach.

Diane: What sort of thing would you like to hear her say?

Jen: “Oh, I’m sorry. I get it.” It’s that simple. But you know, I really get it.

DVO: Instead, she had the kind of family formed by a circle of loving friends from the old days. Before sitcom stardom. At one point, they interrupt the interview.

(howling is heard. Jen laughs)

Diane: What’s that?

Jen: [laughing] We just got sidekicks, all 6 of us, my girlfriends. That’s a howl because, you know, we’re girls, we howl. Should we see who it was?

Diane: Yeah, let’s see who it was.

Jen: Oh, they’re just loving on me. Wishing me luck on the interview with Diane.

DVO: And there’s someone else to be a way to heal the rift between mother and daughter, her husband, Brad Pitt, who is famously close to his own parents. But on the day they got married while Aniston’s father was there, her mom wasn’t interview. Nancy Aniston has still never met her movie star son-in-law.

Jen: I never thought my mom would not know my husband.

Diane: You know, listening to you talking about everything you’ve said about forgiving your mom makes me think you’re there.

Jen: I - something that Brad has taught me, Let it - forgiveness is a hard…

DVO: So hard, it’s even a hard sentence to finish.

Jen: One thing Brad would always say to me, “You know what? We’re going to do the best we can.”

DVO: When we return, is Jennifer making an announcement or dreaming out loud?

[Commercial break]

Diane: Why is it so hard to believe that famous marriages and famous people live in the end where we all do? Joy, annoyance, quirk and happiness earn one anniversary at a time. At one point I told Aniston that I had a clip from someone I’d talk to six years ago. Someone who was just a heartbeat away from a first date with what would turn out to be the girl of his dreams. [Diane shows Jen the clip of Brad talking about love]

[Beginning of clip] Brad: You have to make it work and be honest about it, if you find yourself going another way. It’s very simple stuff. That’s all. Yet honesty seems to be the toughest thing to grasp. Honesty with yourself, how you really feel, honesty with others. Otherwise you’re better off alone. Don’t waste someone else’s time. [End of clip]

Jen: He’s lovely! Who is that?! [laughs]

DVO: It was 1998 when Jennifer Aniston went out on a date with Brad Pitt, only arranged in Hollywood by intuitive matchmaking agents.

Diane: You knew right away?

Jen: Yeah, on our first date. We both did. It was weird.

Diane: Did you say it?

Jen: No. I thought it, thought it. “Mmm, that was a really easy evening. That was a lot of fun.”

Diane: Cause you said at one point, “This has been the hardest year of my life as well as the best” at the beginning of your marriage.

Jen: It’s hard just getting used to the idea that you’re married. Am I ready? There’s always an am I ready question. You know, I thought I was ready.

DVO: Once again, that classic Aniston loving to question and search, even though she’s living every girl’s fantasy. She recently moved into a 14,000 foot house designed by him.

Diane: Do you love having a big house?

Jen: Yeah, but I loved having a small house. I love having a room. This is great - I could just be- I love a hotel room. That makes me happy. I love that we have a dining room. I love that we can - you know - we love being in the same room. We got a house with more rooms yet we love to be in the same room.

Diane: Who’s more neurotic, you or him?

Jen: Oh, me.

Diane: You’re a sleepwalker?

Jen: Uh-huh.

Diane: Serious?

Jen: I woke up one time outside of my house, the alarm - the alarm woke me up. I was outside by the pool equipment. [laughs]

Diane: Really?

Jen: Scared the crap out of me. And Brad was screaming my name cause the alarms going off and I’m not in bed.

Diane: Do you talk a lot too?

Jen: Yeah, I talk in my sleep. Very busy. Very busy in my sleep.

Diane: And is he jealous?

Jen: Brad?!

Diane: Yeah. Who’s more jealous?

Jen: We worked on that one. We got rid of that one. I think jealousy is healthy to a point, but, no, we’ve worked on that one. We knocked that one out.

Diane: This is interesting because at one point someone asked you recently, W Magazine, if he was the love of your love, and you hesitated.

Jen: No, I didn’t hesitate. That was something I hated reading. I can’t imagine being with any other human being. I married him because he was the love of my life. And you know, he’s the most fun I’ve ever had. So when you see these things written in magazines and taken out of context, it’s so frustrating because people then take it and run. Or if you don’t, God forbid, thank him at an awards ceremony, we’re divorced and moving into separate homes.

DVO: [a clip of Jen pretending to be a photographer on SNL this year is played] That’s Jennifer Aniston on Saturday Night Live just last weekend, getting her licks in on the paparazzi, who pester her constantly about her marriage and when she’s gonna have babies, how many.

Diane: You said after FRIENDS you’re gonna have children.

Jen: Yeah.

Diane: Was it a duel between his seven and your two or three?

Jen: Oh no, that’s gotten blown out of proportion. We definitely would like to have two, you know, a brother and sister.

DVO: [Along Came Polly clip plays of Polly trying to find her keys] In the mean time, her new movie, Along Came Polly, is the kinda comic holiday, a girl who is restless and questions everything. A girl, who reminds you a lot of Aniston. [Another ACP clip plays] But she said what really interested her was not self portrait but doing the salsa with old friend and co-star, Ben Stiller.

Diane: The salsa dancing, little dirty dancing?

Jen: A little quirky. I just wanted to work with Ben.

DVO: But next week, Jen will be working with 5 actors she knows best in all the world for the last time. When we come back, she tells us something secret about all her friends that they don’t even know themselves.

[Commercial break]

Diane: Before we leave the valedictor to the television phenomenon, as we know, next Friday the cast will be taping their final episode. It’s hard to believe “I’ll be there for you” is not just the lyrics to the song. So we asked Aniston to go one by one and tell us something about her famous friends that they even don’t know themselves. We stared by asking about Courteney Cox.

Jen: Something she doesn’t know about herself?

Diane: Yeah.

Jen: How gorgeous she is. She has no clue. I’m not talking visible because that’s right there in her face when you see it. It’s all the way through.

[Rachel & Phoebe kissing clip from TOW Rachel’s Big Kiss]

Jen: Lisa has a big huge heart. Whether she likes to say she’s cold and standoffish, but she’s like a warm fire.

[clip of 403 TOW The Cuffs of Chandler cuffed to filing cabinet plays]

Diane: What about Matthew? What doesn’t he know?

Jen: That he’s all right. [she starts to cry]

DVO: Perry had a tough battle with addiction.

Jen: He struggled.

DVO: When it hit, his fellow actors tried but didn’t know how to help.

Jen: We didn’t know, we weren’t equipped to deal with it, you know. Nobody had ever dealt with that. And you know, at the idea of even losing him [she’s really choked up at this point] - he’s - he’s had a road. But he’s all right.

[901 TOW No One Proposes clip of Joey plays]

Diane: And Matt?

Jen: I wonder if he realizes the depth of his talent. He has a lot more in there than being funny. We tell him how adored he is all the time and the girls just love Matty.

Diane: And David?

Jen: Schwimmer? He knows everything. He’s just doing fine. [laughs] I wonder if he believes that he’ll make an amazing husband. And I - think he will.

Diane: And Jennifer?

Jen: And she is - uh, that she’s okay. She’s all right too.

Diane: What was FRIENDS? What was this thing?

Jen: It’s hard to find the word. What was FRIENDS? FRIENDS was - I’ll bet I’ll be able to say it was the time of my life. [various clips of Rachel through the years play ending with Ross & Rachel kissing after Emma was born]

Diane: Aniston’s new movie, Along Came Polly, opens around the country tomorrow.