The Morning Show star Jennifer Aniston is speaking out against the “narrative” that she hadn’t had children due to being “a selfish workaholic,” revealing she underwent a private 20-year pursuit to conceive.
In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, the 56-year-old Friends alum admitted she felt pressured into responding to media speculation about why she’s never had children, something she’d previously kept to herself.
“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 said. “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, a workaholic.”
Aniston confessed the speculation “does affect” her, saying, “I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings. That’s why I thought, ‘What the hell?’”
The Emmy-winning actress, who was married to Brad Pitt from 2000 to 2005 and to Justin Theroux from 2015 to 2018, previously opened up in a 2022 interview with Allure, where she revealed she’d undergone IVF treatment.
“My late thirties, forties, I’d gone through really hard s***, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be. I was trying to get pregnant,” she shared, adding, “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it.”
Aniston told Harper’s Bazaar UK that part of the reason she ultimately decided to speak out was because she knew many other women at the time who were trying to have kids and 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,” she stated.
These days, though, Aniston said she is less concerned with correcting made-up media speculation and online rumors.
“The news cycle is so fast, it just goes away,” she said. “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.”