Jennifer Aniston Has a Harsh Take on What a Modern-Day Friends Would Look Like

It’s been more than a dozen years since the beloved cast of Friends spent their days hanging around New York City apartments and cafés, getting into (and out of) trouble together. In a podcast interview with Arianna Huffington for Thrive Global Podcast With iHeartRadio, star actor Jennifer Aniston reflected on how the motley crew of pals might interact if they were living in a modern-day Manhattan, complete with all its attendant technology.

“Now you have a computer, a television, and a phone. There’s no room. We were jokingly saying that if Friends was created today, you would have a coffee shop full of people that were just staring into iPhones,” Aniston told Huffington of her vision of how the show would be in contemporary times. “There would be no actual episodes or conversations.”

Friends, which aired for ten seasons starting in 1994 and still looms large in pop culture, mostly avoided navigating the pros and cons of modern communication technology in its plot lines. Instead, Ross, Rachel, Joey, Monica and the rest of the gang tended to find each other in-person, either at one of their apartment’s or in their go-to coffee shop.

Aniston also commented on her avoidance of social media. “My husband’s on Instagram, and people that I know are on Instagram. I have anxiety watching them navigate through Instagram,” she admitted. “It’s kind of a little bit out of sight out of mind… but then you find yourself the only one that doesn’t have it and there’s no one to talk to, because everyone’s head is stuck in their phone.”