James McAvoy got a bit tongue-tied when he met his celebrity crush, Jennifer Aniston.
On the Wednesday, September 11, episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the Speak No Evil star, 45, recalled meeting Aniston at a party when he first moved to Los Angeles and said that it didn’t go well.
“I did meet her and it wasn’t great,” he said, quickly adding that it wasn’t “because she’s not great.”
Rather, the Scottish star found himself starstruck.
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“I was at a party when I was really young. I was like 22 in LA. And I met Lucy Liu and Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me. She was like, ‘Come meet my friends.’ There was a big circle of her friends and one of them happened to be Jennifer Aniston, and I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston,” McAvoy remembered.
He continued, “And just as [Liu] was like, ‘Hey guys, meet my new friend James’ … instead of saying that, she got pulled aside by a guy she went to high school with and she went away. I was just left standing with all these people going, ‘Hey, what’s up, I’m new in town.’”
Making things more awkward, he said he turned to Aniston, 55, and said, “So you’re Jennifer Aniston and you’re in Friends.”
McAvoy turned away from the camera for a moment to hide his embarrassment before adding, “It was rough. But she was lovely.”
The Atonement actor is far from the first person in Hollywood to fall for Aniston.
During the 2021 Friends reunion special, David Schwimmer recalled that he had a “major crush on Jen” while shooting the first season of the classic sitcom.
“It was reciprocated,” Aniston responded.
Schwimmer detailed the nature of their relationship, insisting that it never went further than friendship. “I think at some point we were both crushing hard on each other, but it was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship, and we never crossed that boundary,” he said. “We respected that.”
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Schwimmer and Aniston’s characters, Ross and Rachel, got together in Friends season 2, and Aniston said she had hoped to explore their real-life connection before making out on screen.
“I remember saying one time to David, ‘It’s gonna be such a bummer if the first time you and I actually kiss is going to be on national television,’” said the actress. “Sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. We just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”
