Jennifer Aniston reveals ‘first big splurge’ with Friends paycheck was a ‘mistake’

The ‘Friends’ star reportedly made $22,500 per episode when the show first aired in 1994

Jennifer Aniston revealed the “big splurge” item she bought with her first-ever Friends paycheck that she instantly regretted.

In a recent interview with PopSugar, the 54-year-old actor said that her first major purchase after landing the role of Rachel Green on the hit ‘90s sitcom was a vintage cream-coloured 280 SL Mercedes-Benz that had been for sale for more than two years.

“I do remember my first big splurge was on a Mercedes that had a for sale sign on it for almost two years,” she told PopSugar earlier this week.

Aniston went on to explain how she frequently saw the vintage car while passing by the Fred Segal store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

“There was a little white 280 SL Mercedes and it was there for a long time. It could’ve been over two years,” the Morning Show star recalled. “I was always like, ‘I can’t wait, someday.’”

After receiving her first Friends payday, the We’re the Millers actor finally bought the classic car – but she didn’t have it for long.

“I drove it and then drove it again, and it never drove again,” Aniston said. “It was a lemon and that’s why it’s been sitting there. I didn’t know any better to get it checked out. So, that was just a nice 25-year-old mistake.”

This isn’t the first time Aniston has expressed her regret over buying the broken-down car. In 2021, she revealed on InStyle‘s podcast Ladies First with Laura Brown that she spent $13,000 on the vintage Mercedes.

“[It] sat forever, saying ‘for sale’ on it for like two years. And I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could buy that car one day?’” Aniston recalled. “And then the first year of Friends happened and I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to buy that antique car, because I’ve always loved that car.’ I can’t remember how much it was. It might’ve been like $13,000.”

Although she spent $13,000 on the car only to drive it twice, both Aniston and the rest of the Friends cast made $22,500 per episode when the show first aired in 1994. By the third season, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer were reportedly making $100,000 per episode. Before the series ended in 2004, the cast had negotiated a whopping salary of $1m each per episode, which at the time was the largest-ever for a 30-minute television show. According to USA Today, Warner Bros still earns $1bn a year from just reruns alone.

Many fans of Friends were quick to point out how Aniston’s regretful purchase was “such a Rachel Green thing to do,” while another said: “A car trying to be sold for two years is a red flag.”

Although Friends continues to cash in, the Horrible Bosses star recently said that there’s “a whole generation of kids” who will now find the early aughts show “offensive”.

“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive,” Aniston told the Associated Foreign Press. “There were things that were never intentional and others… well, we should have thought it through, but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now.”

In recent years, the NBC sitcom has been called out by viewers for its themes of homophobia, sexism, and the cast’s lack of diversity. Friends creator Marta Kauffman has also said that she was “embarrassed” by the show’s lack of diversity and pledged $4m (£3.2m) to fund an endowed chair at Brandeis University’s African and African American Studies department.

“Comedy has evolved, movies have evolved,” Aniston said. “Now it’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, make fun of life.

She continued: “You could joke about a bigot and have a laugh. That was hysterical. And it was about educating people on how ridiculous people were, and now we’re not allowed to do that. Everybody needs funny! The world needs humour! We can’t take ourselves too seriously. Especially in the United States. Everyone is far too divided.”