Jennifer Aniston Turned Down ‘SNL’ Before ‘Friends’ Over Its Male-Dominated Culture

Jennifer Aniston recently spoke about her early career on the Armchair Expert podcast, sharing memories of her late father, John Aniston, and his advice about becoming an actor.

John Aniston, known for his long-running role on Days of Our Lives, warned his daughter about the difficulties of the acting world.

“My dad was telling me, ‘Please don’t do this, you’re just going to suffer rejection,’” Aniston said. “‘Just go get a job. Like, get a real job.’ All the cliché things. [But] whatever drives you, if you find passion in something and you love it, go do it.”

Aniston said she always wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps but rejected the idea that her success came simply because of who her father was. “So, maybe you got into a door because you’re so-and-so’s kid, but if you suck, guess what? You’re not going to continue to do it,” she explained. She also told Vanity Fair earlier this year that much of her early motivation was trying to win her father’s approval.

“Always wanting to get Pop’s approval — it was the thing that drove me,” she said.

Before landing her iconic role as Rachel Green on NBC’s Friends, Aniston revealed that she had actually turned down an opportunity to appear on Saturday Night Live.

“I always thought I was such hot s***. The story of that is all very confusing,” she said when asked by host Dax Shepard.

She explained that she had met Lorne Michaels in New York and ran into Adam Sandler and David Spade. “I don’t know why I had this self-righteous attitude of ‘I don’t know if women are treated the way they should be treated on this show. It’s a very male-dominated [show], I would love to be here if it was in the Gilda Radner day.’” She admitted she couldn’t remember all the details, adding, “Something like that. I can’t remember, but I just remember ‘Friends’ then happened.”

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