Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.(NEW YORK) — The long-awaited Friends reunion special for HBO Max was delayed once again due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Jennifer Aniston has found a silver lining in this latest snag.
Aniston, who starred in the series, alongside Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry, tells Deadline, “This has also given us more time to make it even more exciting and more fun than it would have been. So I choose to see it as the glass is half-full that it got postponed.”
“Look, we’re not going anywhere,” she insists. “You’re never going to get rid of Friends, sorry. You’re stuck with us for life, guys.”
The special was initially supposed to shoot back in March with a live audience, with the plan it would be a main attraction for the new streaming service that launched in May. However, the pandemic shut down production, which was just starting to ramp up in Los Angeles and elsewhere. That in turn nixed plans the Friends special’s completion by the summer’s end.
As of now, there’s no date set to start production.
“Unfortunately it’s very sad that we had to move it again,” says Aniston, but insists safety is their major concern. “It was, ‘How do we do this with live audiences?’ This is not a safe time. Period. That’s the bottom line. It’s not a safe time to do it.”
As for 2020, Aniston says it can’t end soon enough. “I’m supposed to renew my drivers license and I don’t want it to say 2020 on it,” she jokes. “I just want to get 2020 out and behind us.”
By George Costantino and Stephen Iervolino
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