The One With the Name Connection! The season 7 finale of Friends is a fan-favorite for many reasons: Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Monica (Courteney Cox) get married, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) must deal with a drunk actor (guest star Gary Oldman) and the world finds out Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) is pregnant.
However, there was a big connection to Aniston’s heritage that fans seemed to miss — until now. In the episode, titled “The One with Chandler and Monica’s Wedding,” Rachel is tasked with finding someone to officiate Monica and Chandler’s wedding when Joey gets stuck at work. She then stumbles across a Greek Orthodox wedding happening at the same hotel. Outside the ceremony, a sign reads “Anastasakis Papasifakis Wedding.”
She reads the name aloud — but fans never caught on that Anastasakis is actually a personal connection to the 51-year-old actress. Aniston’s father, John Aniston, was born Yiannis Antonios Anastasakis.
Friends, which originally aired from 1994 to 2004 on NBC, has made headlines recently as an unscripted cast reunion special is set to film for HBOMax whenever the coronavirus pandemic ends.
On June 22, Aniston revealed to Lisa Kudrow that she enjoys watching reruns of the hit sitcom.
“I love it! I love stumbling on a Friends episode,” she shared via in interview with Variety. “This one time I was with Courteney, and we were trying to find something to reference, an old Friends thing and then we stumbled on — there’s bloopers online, like, 15 minutes work of bloopers. We sat there at the computer like two nerds watching these bloopers laughing at ourselves.”
Meanwhile, the Comeback creator, 56, shared that she doesn’t watch the reruns because she hopes that one day, the full cast can get together and watch. That said, one episode sticks out as fans always bring it up: “The One Where Everybody Finds Out,” in which Phoebe yells, “My eyes! My eyes!” when she finds out about Chandler and Monica’s secret relationship.
“I stole [it] from Matthew Perry. That’s how Matthew Perry says things,” the Space Force actress said. “I actually asked his permission before we shot it. I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the rehearsals, but I’m saying ‘My eyes! My eyes!’ the way you do. So I just need to know that that’s OK with you. If not, I’ll say it a different way.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, go for it.'”
