Getty
"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 says in a new interview. "It does affect me -- I'm just a human being."
Jennifer Aniston is setting the record straight about longstanding public scrutiny regarding the fact that she's never had children. And it's not because she's "selfish," as was thrown about her around over the years.
In a new interview with Harper's Bazaar UK, The Morning Show star reveals that the decades of negative comments about this issue have weighed on her, even as people were completely unaware of what was really going on in her personal life.
"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; that's not anybody’s business," Aniston shared, revealing that she spent years attempting to conceive.
"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," she told the magazine. "It does affect me -- I'm just a human being."
Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.
After enduring years of unsuccessful in-vitro fertilization procedures, Aniston wrote an op/ed in 2016 for HuffPost where she blasted the insensitive treatment of women in the media over this issue of motherhood, even as she was keeping her own struggles more private.
"That's why I thought, 'What the hell?' I knew a lot of women at the time who were trying to have kids, who were dealing with IVF," she explained. "So it did feel like it was not only for myself, but for any women who were struggling with the same issue."
The Friends star had previously opened up about her decades-long IVF journey in an interview with Allure in 2022, calling it "a challenging road for me, the baby-making road."
All the while, she said that no one ever suggested she freeze her eggs, and the thought never crossed her own mind, "so here I am today, the ship has sailed." And while it was a struggle for many years, she said that she has no regrets, and now that the "ship has sailed," so to speak, she feels "a little relief because there is no more, 'Can I? Maybe.'"
Jennifer Aniston Says 'Of Course' She and Gwyneth Paltrow Gossip About Shared Ex Brad Pitt
View StoryWaiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.
She told Harper's Bazaar UK that she's grateful that tabloid culture and the perceived "circle of shame" women were often placed in when it comes to motherhood is less powerful now, she worries that the casual cruelty that used to live in the pages of magazines and newspapers has just shifted to social media, "so now any schmuck can stay anonymous and write whatever the hell they want to write."
While talking about AI deepfakes -- a storyline on the current season of The Morning Show -- Aniston called that and big tech in general "a runaway train" with regulation unable to keep up with it, especially when it comes to young users on social media. "I'm sure the guys who came up with it thought it was a great idea and, yeah, congratulations on your billions," she said. "but it has taken down a huge portion of humanity."
Regardless, nearly a decade later, Aniston shared that she doesn't feel as compelled to "correct a false narrative" when she sees it on social media in the press, because in the modern media landscape, "the news cycle is so fast, it just goes away."
And the times that a false narrative does spin out of control and she starts to "feel that sense of justice" and a "need to right the wrong," Aniston said she pauses, "and then I think, do I really? My family knows my truth, my friends know my truth."
