Jennifer Aniston Regrets Her ‘First Big Splurge’ From Her ‘Friends’ Paycheck

The “Friends” star recently told PopSugar what her first big purchase was after landing her role as Rachel Green on the smash NBC sitcom ― and, she said, it was a huge mistake.

“My first big splurge was on a Mercedes that had a ‘for sale’ sign on it for almost two years,” she said, noting that she frequently saw the car on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. “There was a little white 280 SL Mercedes and it was there for 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 one day I bought it, and then I drove it, and then drove it again, and it never drove again.”

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

This isn’t the first time Aniston has expressed her remorse over buying the clunker. In 2021, she told InStyle’s “Ladies First” podcast that 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.”

Perhaps she felt like a sucker, but the cast of “Friends” reportedly made $250,000 per episode when the show first aired, and famously negotiated $1 million per episode in the show’s final years. So, although $13,000 is a significant amount of money, the purchase ultimately didn’t brake the bank for Aniston.