Jennifer Aniston said that “pivot” to kissing David Schwimmer was lovely.
The actress, who had a crush on her “Friends” co-star, said there was nothing “weird” about the two smooching each other onscreen for the first time in Season 2.
“It was quite enjoyable, actually,” the actress, 54, told Ryan Seacrest on Thursday’s episode of “Live with Kelly and Mark” in an interview that originally aired in March.
The segment was a replay due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike which prevents actors from promoting their work.
“You and David in the early years had a crush on each other,” Kelly Ripa noted, to which Aniston replied, “Yes, we did. We just let it play out on TV.”
“Sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop,” the “Morning Show” star added. “So, we just channeled all of our love and adoration for each other into [their characters] Ross and Rachel.”
During the “Friends: The Reunion” documentary in 2021, Schwimmer, 56, confessed that he had harbored a “major crush” on Aniston during the show’s first season.
Aniston shared that the feelings were “reciprocated.”
“At some point, we were both crushing hard on each other, but it was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary,” Schwimmer added. “We respected that.”
Aniston has also sworn that they never acted on their feelings off-screen.
“He was lovely, David was great,” Aniston told Howard Stern in a 2021 interview. “But no, we never, on my life [got together] … We were in relationships and it was always never the right time and it wouldn’t have worked.”
The show’s producers were well aware of the couple’s attraction to each other at the time.
“It was a very hot topic on the set because the electricity between in the scenes was like, ‘Oh my God, they can’t be acting that, there’s got to be something,'” executive producer Kevin Bright said in a May 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“Everybody was suspicious that something was going on,” he added.
Co-creator Marta Kauffman agreed.
“It was pretty obvious,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “We didn’t know for sure because we never asked either of them, but yes, we thought that perhaps might be going on.”
Aniston and Schwimmer’s onscreen characters, Ross and Rachel, had a tumultuous relationship that included a breakup, baby conceived in a one-night stand, a drunken wedding in Las Vegas followed by a divorce, before finally ending up together in the season finale.
