Jennifer Aniston 20 Years Later
Revisiting Jennifer Aniston's mythological “The Unsinkable Jennifer Aniston” interview
Dear Squawkers,
Jennifer Aniston’s love life is back in the news this summer after a relatively long break. This is longest stretch that she’s been single since she became famous – seven years, ever since she divorced Justin Theroux in 2018. That was also the length of their relationship and, curiously, the same amount of time she and Brad Pitt were together. Jen seems like a kind of woo woo person and I wonder if the seven-year numerology is something she’s been thinking about since in the seventh year of singleness, she and hypnotist Jim Curtis are now together.
Jen’s return to romance is happening just as we mark a major gossip anniversary. Twenty years ago this month, she covered Vanity Fair for an interview that has become mythological, titled “The Unsinkable Jennifer Aniston”. It was the September 2005 issue which would have been released the month before, in August, in keeping with magazine publication deadlines. But Jennifer Aniston has been covering magazines for 30 years now, why is this one so noteworthy?
Because it was her first after divorcing Brad Pitt, at the height of the Love Triangle that preoccupied the gossip ecosystem for more than a decade. Because it gave us SO much to talk about, to argue over, to quote. Because she was never as candid and forthcoming in any subsequent interviews after this one. Reaction to this cover story, at the time, was batshit. When you go and read it back, you appreciate that we were not dramatising or exaggerating, which can happen when we reflect with today’s eyes on yesterday’s vision. But there is no overstating how dishy this interview was, not just in its time but perhaps even more so now. Also, there is no overstating how of its time this interview is. Because when I say that she has never been as candid and forthcoming since in an interview, it’s not just true of her but of most celebrities at her level. Jen covered Vanity Fair at her most famous and when magazines were still a critical source of gossip, before Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and podcasts. In the summer of 2005, America’s Sweetheart, freshly dumped for America’s Vixen, took all her sadness and tears to what was then the most prestigious celebrity flagship publication, prolonging what was already a gossip frenzy.
First, let’s situate ourselves. As already noted, the Jennifer Aniston VF September 2005 issue dropped in August, pretty much eight months after one of the most bombshell Friday celebrity news buries of all time. On Friday January 7, 2005, Jen and Brad Pitt announced their separation. They’d just been papped days before on holiday in Anguilla and those photos are forever burned into some of our brains – they kissed on the beach, he was wearing a shirt with the word “TRASH” across the front. You can see the photos here.
The statement about their split was that much more shocking, then, because we had literally just seen them seemingly all good, only to find out that that was a “this is the end” trip. And of course, immediately the speculation started about him and Angelina Jolie. Over the next few months, Brad and Angelina became Brangelina, officially, and with every sighting of them there was a story in PEOPLE or Entertainment Tonight or in the tabloids with a retaliation from Jen – and this tit-for-tat back and forth went on for years, prompting the public to take sides (and buy t-shirts): Team Aniston or Team Jolie.
If you were reading LaineyGossip back then, you will recall that I was Team Jolie, firmly. It bothered me the way Angelina was being characterised, and this is when I came up with my expression, “The MiniVan Majority”, because it was that demographic who seemed to be projecting themselves onto Jen and their worst woman-hating fears onto Angelina. To me, in 2005, it looked like Jen was feeding into the MiniVan Majority’s bias, and leaning hard into the victim role, which was amplified to a nuclear level in the Vanity Fair cover story. At least the way I perceived it then…
