Jennifer Aniston reveals why doing the 'Friends' reunion was 'jarring' and more difficult than she expected it to be: 'Time travel is hard'

• Jennifer Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter that the "Friends" reunion was harder than expected.
• She said that returning to set made her remember what she felt the last time she was there.

Jennifer Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter that returning to the "Friends" set for the show's reunion special was a "jarring" experience because it made her remember how her personal life post-show didn't match up to her expectations.

The actor joined "Friends" costars David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, and Matt LeBlanc for an unscripted reunion special that was released on HBO Max in May. The special recreated sets from the original show, which aired for ten seasons from 1994 to 2004, and featured the cast reminiscing about their time on the series.

"Time travel is hard," Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter.

Aniston had previously spoken about the reunion being difficult for her, telling Rob Lowe on a September episode of his podcast "Literally!" that it was a harder experience than she had anticipated. She told The Hollywood Reporter that she had to "walk out at certain points" during the special.

"I think we were just so naive walking into it, thinking, 'How fun is this going to be? They're putting the sets back together, exactly as they were,'" Aniston told The Hollywood Reporter. "Then you get there and it's like, 'Oh right, I hadn't thought about what was going on the last time I was actually here.'"

In 2005, less than a year after the conclusion of "Friends," Aniston and then-husband Brad Pitt announced that they were separating after seven years of marriage. In a statement to People at the time, the pair said that their separation was not the result of "speculation reported by the tabloid media," much of which focused on Pitt's relationship with his "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" co-star, Angelina Jolie.

The actor told The Hollywood Reporter that it was more unexpected shifts in her personal, rather than professional, life post-"Friends" that made the reunion difficult. She didn't specify exactly what those shifts were.

"We all had an idea of what the future was going to be and we were going to go hunker down and focus on this or that," Aniston said. "And then it all just changed overnight, and that was it."