Jennifer Aniston Addresses Rumors About Why She Didn’t Have Children

In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K., Jennifer Aniston opened up about the hurtful rumors surrounding her not having a child—particularly surrounding rumors that, during her marriage to Brad Pitt, she was “prioritizing her career over having a child,” the outlet reported. In truth, she was going through IVF treatments that ultimately proved unsuccessful.

This led to a 2016 op-ed in The Huffington Post, where she spoke out about the media’s insensitive treatment of women, specifically around very personal reproductive issues. “They didn’t know my story or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. in a new interview. “That’s not anybody’s business.”

“But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it—the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, I’m a workaholic,” she added. “It does affect me—I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings. That’s why I thought, ‘What the hell?’”

Aniston spoke out initially “because I knew a lot of women at the time who were trying to have kids, who were dealing with IVF. So it did feel like it was not only for myself, but for any women who were struggling with the same issue.”

The cruelty that once resided in the pages of tabloids now resides on social media, she said, telling the publication, “So now any schmuck can stay anonymous and write whatever the hell they want to write.”

Aniston previously told Allure that trying to get pregnant “was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.”

“I was throwing everything at it,” she continued. “I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”

Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar U.K. that “The older I get, the less I care about correcting a narrative, because it will happen eventually. The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away. Of course, there are times when I feel that sense of justice—when something has been said that isn’t true and I need to right the wrong. And then I think, ‘Do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, she speaks about her experience filming the NBC sitcom Friends for 10 years, calling a remake or a sequel “literally, physically impossible” after the 2023 death of castmate Matthew Perry.

“There’s something about the chemistry of the cast that made for a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, and that just happened to get caught on camera,” she said. Of her co-stars, Aniston added, “It was like we married each other—they’re my family. Sometimes you love to hate your family, but it’s a lifetime commitment, for sure.”

As for what’s next for The Morning Show star? Broadway, possibly. “I haven’t done theater yet because it terrifies me, but it’s the one thing I haven’t tried besides mak[ing] an album, which I doubt I’ll do,” Aniston said. “But I grew up in New York and loved going to the theater, so I think it’d be fun.”