It was the pitts.
Jennifer Aniston hasn’t publicly spoken much about her “love triangle” with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt, and his now-ex wife, Angelina Jolie, but the “Friends” star made some rare comments in a Vanity Fair profile published Monday.
“It was…such a vulnerable time,” she told the outlet. “Journalism back then felt more like a form of a sport.”
Aniston, 56, and Pitt, 61, were married from 2000 to 2005. Pitt met Angelina Jolie, 50, on the set of the 2005 movie “Mr. and Mrs Smith.”
The “Fight Club” actor was with Jolie from 2005 to 2016 when she filed for divorce.
Reflecting on the tabloid frenzy around her “love triangle” with Pitt and Jolie, Aniston told VF, “There’s obviously some PTSD we all have, which is why these [interviews] scare me.”
“The Morning Show” actress added, “How are they going to misinterpret my words or take something out of context? And one line nowadays …”
For years after Pitt left Aniston for Jolie, speculation about Aniston’s love life and desire to have kids or not was splashed in headlines.
“It was such juicy reading for people. If they didn’t have their soap operas, they had their tabloids,” Aniston told VF.
She said, “It’s a shame that it had to happen, but it happened. And boy did I take it personally.”
VF noted that Aniston refers to that period of time as “the love triangle” years.
The “Along Came Polly” actress said that her advice to herself at the time was, “Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and keep on walking, girl.”
Referring to her constant presence in the tabloids around 2005, Aniston shared, “I didn’t have a strong enough constitution to not get affected by it.”
The “Horrible Bosses” actress added, “We’re human beings, even though some people don’t want to believe we are. They think, You signed up for it, so you take it. But we really didn’t sign up for that.”
Following Pitt, Aniston had high-profile relationships with John Mayer and Vince Vaughn, before her relationship with Justin Theroux. The pair were linked in 2011 and tied the knot in 2015. Aniston and Theroux revealed their split in 2018 and went through “the most gentle” divorce.
Pitt, meanwhile, married Jolie in 2014. The exes have three biological children, Shiloh, 19, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 17, and three adopted children, Maddox, 24, Pax, 21, and Zahara, 20.
In 2016, Jolie ended their marriage following an alleged altercation on a plane with their six children present.
Pitt was investigated after the alleged incident and wasn’t charged by authorities, but he is believed to be estranged from his kids.
After their split, Pitt and Jolie spent nearly a decade fighting over the custody of their children and the division of their assets.
On Dec. 30, 2024, Jolie’s lawyer confirmed that the former couple finally reached a settlement in their divorce, five years after they were declared legally single.
Since 2022, Pitt has been romantically linked to Ines De Ramon. In recent years, Aniston has spoken more about her image in the media.
In a 2021 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, she said, “I used to take it all very personally — the pregnancy rumors and the whole ‘Oh, she chose career over kids’ assumption. It’s like, ‘You have no clue what’s going with me personally, medically, why I can’t … can I have kids?’ They don’t know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty.”
In November 2022, Aniston got candid about her struggles with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and her infertility.
In 2023, she said that Adam Sandler sends her flowers every Mother’s Day.
Jason Bateman, who’s Aniston’s close friend, told Vanity Fair in Monday’s story that the actress is like a “co-mom” to his kids, Francesca, 18, and Maple, 13.
The “Arrested Development” actor said that Aniston is “the first one to call or text about big dates in the girls’ lives.”
She’s also friends with Gwyneth Paltrow, who dated Pitt from 1994 to 1997. When asked if they talk about their mutual ex, she said, “Oh, of course. How can we not? We’re girls.”
Aniston has not written a memoir, but she told VF that she will publish one someday, when she has “more” to share.
Besides Pitt, the star also admitted that she and her “Friends” co-stars “mourned” Matthew Perry long before his death in 2023.
