Jennifer Aniston is best known for her role as Rachel Green in the wildly successful sitcom Friends – but she could have starred in another legendary TV series.
The actress, 55, was once in consideration to join the cast of gritty crime drama, NCIS.
Aniston has been rumored for years to have been interested in joining the cast of the show and the creators behind the hit series shed light on how the star came into casting consideration during a chat with The Hollywood Reporter.
Executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson recalled how Aniston’s name was ‘floated’ during discussion.
‘I think Jennifer Aniston was available at the time, and her name was floated,’ he remarked.
Jennifer Aniston is best known for her role as Rachel Green in the wildly successful sitcom Friends – but she could have starred in another legendary TV series
NCIS, starring Marc Harmon, has been on the air since 2003 and spawned numerous spin-offs
NCIS creator Donald P. Bellisario, however, didn’t specifically recall Johnson’s anecdote, but believes it could have happened.
‘I don’t remember ever offering it to Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston could very well have been a name that we discussed,’ he said.
The executives never clarified what role exactly Aniston may have been up for, but her name came up after they described Sasha Alexander joining the show as Caitlin Todd.
Initially, Blake Lively’s older sister Robyn Lively was in the two-episode pilot before Sasha later joined.
‘Sasha Alexander wasn’t in the two-episode pilot. It was an actress by the name of Robyn Lively [who is Blake Lively’s older half-sister],’ Johnson said.
‘They liked her, but they didn’t think she quite worked. And so when the series got picked up, CBS said, “We’d rather move on.” And then we went in search of a character, and Sasha came in at the last minute. I loved Robyn Lively, but those things do happen.’
‘Don Bellisario really understands the particular attributes to put on a character that make them stand out,’ Glenn Geller, the former president of CBS Entertainment, added. ‘They are kind of stock characters, but he always infuses it with some attribute that really makes them special.’
At the time Aniston’s name came into conversation for a role, she would have been approaching the finish line of Friends. NCIS debuted in 2003, while Friends officially ended a year later.
The executives never clarified what role exactly Aniston may have been up for, but her name came up after they described Sasha Alexander joining the show as Caitlin Todd (Alexander pictured right)
Aniston famously played Rachel Green on Friends
The hit series about a friend group of twenty-somethings ended after 10 years in 2004
Had Aniston been in contention for a role on NCIS, it would have been during the last few seasons of Friends
More recently Aniston returned to the small screen with a leading role in The Morning Show, a series about the workings of a national morning show program
NCIS was a spin-off of JAG, which ran for 10 seasons between 1995 and 2005.
The Marc Harmon-led series ended up spawning a number of CBS spin-offs itself, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, NCIS: Hawaii, and NCIS: Sydney.
The series ‘follows the Major Case Response Team (MCRT) from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), as they get to the bottom of criminal cases connected to Navy and Marine Corps personnel,’ according to IMDb.
Aniston’s career continued to flourish after she departed the wildly successful sitcom Friends, which chronicled a friend group of twenty-somethings in New York City.
She pivoted from television and onto the big screen, with starring roles in numerous films including Horrible Bosses, He’s Just Not That Into You, Marley & Me, and more.
More recently Aniston returned to the small screen with a leading role in The Morning Show, a series about the workings of a national morning show program.
Her work as news anchor Alex Levy garnered her numerous nominations. In 2020, she won a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for The Morning Show.
