Jennifer Aniston says her first big splurge from her ‘Friends’ paycheck was a mistake

The actors playing the six main characters in the show reportedly earned $22,500 per episode when they started out, with the cast negotiating a salary of $1 million per episode by the final seasons.

In an interview with Popsugar to promote her new Netflix movie Murder Mystery 2, Aniston shared details of the first thing she splashed out on with her paycheck from the smash-hit sitcom, in which she starred as Rachel Green.

“My first big splurge was on a Mercedes that had a for sale sign on it for almost two years,” she said. “There was a little white 280 SL Mercedes and it was there a long time. I mean, it could have been over two years. And I always was like, I can’t wait, someday, someday [I’ll buy it]. And then one day I bought it, and I drove it, and then drove it again, and it never drove again.”

Her Murder Mystery 2 costar Adam Sandler, who was also part of the interview, listened to the story and asked Aniston: “Two drives?”

“It was a lemon and that’s why it had been sitting there,” she said. “And I didn’t know any better to get it checked out, so that was just a nice 25-year-old mistake.”

Aniston previously recalled the big splurge in a 2021 interview with InStyle’s Ladies First podcast, saying she paid the $13,000 asking price for the car, which “should’ve been an indicator” of how well it would run.

“The first year of Friends happened, and I was like, you know what I’m going to buy that antique car because I’ve always loved that car,” she said. “I don’t actually think I even made it home before it [died]. It might have honestly just been the shell of a car and I was the sucker to finally purchase it.”