An Afternoon with Jennifer Aniston’s Mum: Insights on Her Toughest Role

She has spent years trying to shrug off her image as ditzy girl-next-door Rachel from Friends – not to mention that famous hairstyle which spawned a million imitations. So when Jennifer Aniston announced that she will be starring in a new ten-part drama called I’m Glad My Mom Died, fans and critics assumed the actress is, finally, trying to be taken seriously in Hollywood.

But just how seriously can be revealed today, because The Mail on Sunday understands Aniston is basing her performance in the Apple TV+ series – about a narcissistic stage mother who abuses her child star daughter – on her own painful childhood.

Aniston, 56, was estranged from her mother Nancy, a former beauty queen-turned-actress, for 15 years until the pair reconciled shortly before Nancy’s death at 79 in 2016 following a series of strokes. And while Aniston has only briefly spoken about her mother over the years, it is clear the wounds run deep.

The actress has told how she struggled with deep insecurities after her mother called her ‘fat, ugly and too Greek-looking’ as a child and constantly criticised her weight.

In one interview, Aniston admitted: ‘My mother was a model and she was all about presentation and what she looked like and what I looked like. I did not come out the model child she’d hoped for and it was something that really resonated with me, this little girl just wanting to be seen and wanting to be loved by a mum who was too occupied with things that didn’t quite matter.’

Nancy was barred from Aniston’s wedding to Brad Pitt in 2000 after appearing on an American tabloid TV show at the height of her daughter’s Friends fame. To make matters worse she also wrote a tell-all book, From Mother And Daughter To Friends: A Memoir, which one associate of Aniston’s called ‘the ultimate betrayal’.

So why has Aniston chosen to reopen such painful wounds at this stage in her life, when everything seems to be going so well?

Her series The Morning Show, also on Apple, is scheduled to launch its fourth season in September, she has a beautiful home and a close-knit circle of friends, including former Friends co-stars Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow.

Aniston, 56, was estranged from her mother Nancy, a former beauty queen-turned-actress, for 15 years until the pair reconciled shortly before Nancy’s death at 79 in 2016 following a series of strokes

Aniston as a six-year-old with her parents Nancy and John in 1975. According to one source, her mother ‘was always jealous that Jen achieved the level of success she never did’

The answer, it seems, lies deep in the past.

One source who worked with Aniston said: ‘Jen is lovely but was deeply insecure for years. She’s made no secret of the fact she’s spent years in therapy dealing with her unhappy childhood. Her mother was always jealous that Jen achieved the level of success she never did.

‘With Jen there’s this sense of wanting to be taking seriously as a proper dramatic actress and that’s why this new project is such a profound choice. She’s going to be playing a narcissistic woman who torments her child in myriad ways. It’s not a flattering role, no matter how you look at it. And it cuts close to the bone.

‘But Jen’s finally ready to confront her demons head-on and everyone in Hollywood has been talking about nothing else since this announcement came out.

‘People can’t wait to see what she does with the role.’

While Aniston achieved an uneasy rapprochement with Nancy towards the end of her mother’s life, it is unclear if she ever achieved the closure and peace she sought.

Nancy, for her part, remained unrepentant.

I remember visiting her at her tiny apartment in a Los Angeles suburb called Toluca Lake shortly after she had her first stroke and asked her if she regretted writing the book about her daughter which led to their 15-year estrangement.

Aniston posing as Rachel in Friends season 2 from 1995. The new role will challenge her acting skills in a way Friends and ‘fluffy’ comedy films such as We’re The Millers and Horrible Bosses never did

Aniston’s parents in 1975. While Aniston achieved an uneasy rapprochement with Nancy towards the end of her mother’s life, it is unclear if she ever achieved the closure and peace she sought

Nancy looked aghast. ‘This is my story and I am entitled to tell it. It’s not down to my daughter to tell me what I can and can’t do,’ she said.

‘If Jennifer doesn’t like my truth, then I’m sorry but that’s on her and her issues, not me.

‘Being a mother isn’t easy. Maybe Jennifer will realise that one day when she has kids of her own. Like any mother, I made mistakes but I did my best.’

Through my decades covering Hollywood, it’s a story I’ve seen repeated time and again.

Major stars including Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields all had domineering stage mothers who pushed them to fulfil, in part at least, their own dreams and ambitions. One source told me: ‘You have to remember this was during the 1970s, an era where adults put their own freewheeling lives ahead of their children.

‘It seemed quite normal to pull kids out of school and have them work long hours on movie sets. Children were pushed to act like little adults. They weren’t allowed to be little kids.’

Nancy’s 1,000 sq ft apartment was in a traditionally working-class part of LA, the San Fernando Valley, close to the major studios. Even today, studio workers make their homes there because rents are comparatively affordable.

Back then it struck me as ironic, and rather sad, that the mother of one of the world’s biggest stars was living in a one-bedroom flat on the fringes of town while her daughter was in a magnificent mansion in the heart of Bel Air, the most expensive neighbourhood in LA. Aniston also owns a home up the coast in Montecito which she bought from Oprah Winfrey in 2021 for $14.8 million (almost £11 million) and is a stone’s throw from the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ sprawling estate.

As I spoke to Nancy it was clear she believed she had done no wrong.

By this stage her once-luminous beauty had faded. She still had the high-cheekbones and piercing blue eyes but her hair was unkempt with grey roots showing. The devastating effects of that first stroke were obvious in her face. It was as if her ambitions had exacted a terrible price.

I asked her if she hoped for a reconciliation with her daughter and she said: ‘Yes, of course, what mother wouldn’t? But she has to come to me.’

That is reportedly what happened, with Aniston reconciling with her mother shortly before Nancy’s death in May 2016.

Aniston has rarely talked about her since, but in a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter she said: ‘Because she was a model, she was gorgeous, stunning. I wasn’t. I never was.

‘I honestly still don’t think of myself in that sort of light, which is fine. She was also very unforgiving. She would hold grudges that I just found so petty.’

That same year, Aniston spoke to ITV’s Lorraine, saying: ‘Her parents were basically non-existent. She had this beauty and that’s how she was able to go out and make a living, modelling. The things she was able to teach me were things I wasn’t really that interested in.

‘She’d say, “Put your eyes on if you’re going to the market.” I’m like 13, so I really have to put my eyes on? Aren’t they there?’

One man who knew Nancy said: ‘Life was hard. She grew up beautiful, the prettiest girl in town, and then she tried to make it in Hollywood. But the most she ever got were bit parts in things like The Beverly Hillbillies. She was deeply disappointed that she didn’t have a fabulous career and I think seeing Jennifer get the success brought mixed emotions.

‘Of course she was proud of her daughter. When they were estranged, she talked about her all the time.

‘She bought magazines with Jen’s face on the cover. But there was a jealousy there and a sadness and a lot of very complex emotions which didn’t improve with time.’

Aniston never had children with first husband Brad Pitt nor second husband Justin Theroux. Both marriages ended in divorce.

The actress has been open about her fertility struggles, telling Allure magazine: ‘It was a challenging role for me, the baby-making road. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it.’ Yet she never did one thing that might have made a difference: ‘I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, “Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favour,”’ she added. ‘You just don’t think it.’

In that same interview, she spoke about forgiving her mother, saying Nancy never recovered from her brutal divorce from soap opera actor John Aniston, who died in 2022, aged 89.

She said: ‘It’s toxic to have that resentment, that anger. I learned that by watching my mum never let go of it. I remember saying, “Thank you for showing me what never to be.”’

The new role will challenge her acting skills in a way Friends and ‘fluffy’ comedy films such as We’re The Millers and Horrible Bosses never did.

I’m Glad My Mom Died is based on the bestselling 2022 memoir of former child star Jennette McCurdy, 33, who became her family’s breadwinner aged six.

McCurdy’s mother Debra was a hoarder whose LA home was overwhelmed with clutter, forcing McCurdy and her three older brothers to sleep on gym mats in the living room ‘because the bedroom was so filled with stuff you couldn’t even determine where the beds were, let alone sleep in them’.

McCurdy, who says she was forced into acting by her mother, hit the big time in the Nickelodeon series iCarly followed by another children’s show, Sam & Cat, where she starred alongside a then little-known Ariana Grande.

In her book, McCurdy describes drinking alcohol as a minor and having to wear ‘sexy’ bikinis in photoshoots as a tween. Her mother put her on strict diets and emotionally and physically abused her by performing invasive exams, claiming she was screening for cancer.

McCurdy told People magazine: ‘My mum’s emotions were so erratic that it was like walking a tightrope every day. She was obsessed with making me a star.’

When McCurdy broached the idea of quitting acting, her mother broke down sobbing saying: ‘You can’t quit! This was our chance! This is our chance!’

McCurdy’s mother died of cancer in 2013, aged 56. After her death, her daughter learned the man she thought was her father was not, and that most of the money she’d earned had disappeared.

McCurdy quit acting and began writing her memoir, which has now sold three million copies. She has also co-written the new show, which will begin filming later this year with Aniston starring as McCurdy’s ‘monster of a mother’.

A source said: ‘Everyone is excited for Jennifer but this is going to be the most challenging role she’s ever taken on because it hits so close to the bone.

‘Jennifer has tried for years to move on from Friends and this could be the show which allows her, finally, to do that.’