16 years ago, the marriage of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt exploded to general amazement. And for good reason, the actor had succumbed to Angelina Jolie on the set of the movie Mr & Mrs Smith. On the occasion of the release of the special episode of Friends on Salto, we take a look back at a love triangle that has made Hollywood and the whole world so hot.
Long before Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie became the "Brangelina", they were lovers. At the time of their meeting, the actor was indeed spinning the perfect love with Jennifer Aniston, which we find in the meeting of Friends, online on the Salto platform this Thursday, May 27. Jen may have progressed in her life and in her career, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie may have separated in 2016, the trio continues to fascinate. As long as the "Brangelina" try to manage the education of their six children, the press wants to believe in a reconciliation. Even if it is just as enough that Jennifer Aniston crosses paths with her ex-husband on a red carpet for them to be said to be ready to start all over together. As if Brad Pitt's heart should remain torn between the two actresses. Return on a love triangle which marked the star-system.
America's heart broke that day. On January 7, 2005, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Hollywood’s s-xiest and most glamorous couple, separated after ten years of almost perfect love. The news had the effect of a bomb, but it was only the formalization of a situation which had become untenable for several months. It took all the denial of which Hollywood conveniences are capable of refusing to face the truth: the "Angelina factor", the nickname given by the American press to the explosive phenomenon which followed the meeting of Pitt and Jolie on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith, at the end of 2003, had accomplished his work of destruction with relentless perfection.
During this interminable period, and until the official pronunciation of the divorce in October 2005, a strange love triangle formed around which rumors, media operations and drama unleashed like in a deranged melodrama. In the cast, Jennifer Aniston, the Friends star turned America's little fiancée, as the sacrificial victim. At his side, two lovers orchestrating, with a diabolical art of the unsaid and the evasive, a story soon too cumbersome to be concealed.
Despite the predictions of a psychic, Jennifer Aniston did not want to see the danger
It all started in November 2003. Director Doug Liman began the long postponed filming of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a romantic action comedy in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play a married couple of hitmen who happen to find themselves tasked with killing each other. The filmmaker, who wants to create s-xual tension between the two stars, tries a bet: from the first scene, Brad and Angelina are seated side by side, facing a marriage counselor. “They don't really know each other. They are embarrassed. It immediately becomes apparent that there is a deep affinity between them, ”Liman later summed up, quite proud of his poker stroke.
Jennifer Aniston, reassured by the fact that her husband turns a few kilometers from their villa in Malibu, has she neglected the danger? Faye, the celebrity clairvoyant whom she consults regularly, has predicted Angelina to be a "dark angel", but Aniston is too busy launching her film career to gauge what lies in store for her. The only time her path crosses Angelina's, the carefree woman will even wish her "to have a lot of fun" with her husband! As Brad prepares to turn 40 in December, fate seems sealed. Four years after their wedding with great fanfare, Pitt and his wife are at a crossroads in their respective careers. Jen, addicted to work, multiplies the shoots. The handsome Midwestern kid now thinks of starting a family and dreams of new horizons
We now know that the adulterous affair was in large part cemented by Brad's affection for Maddox, Angelina's adopted son, often present on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. These moments of complicity, between two takes, bring the actors even closer together and, despite their categorical denials, fuel the rumor of an affair. Part of 2004 thus boils down to a three-way marivauding, the stakes of which are difficult to disentangle. While the filming drags on and his two heroes hesitate less and less to hide their attraction (especially during a sensual dance scene extended long after the director's “cut!”), A few pauses allow them to give illusion that they are going about other occupations. "Neither one of them will ever admit it, but it looked like they had sealed some kind of pact," said Andrew Morton in his unauthorized biography of Angelina Jolie, published in 2010.
As Angelina travels around the world as an ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Brad parades alongside Jennifer from New York to Cannes to present the film Troy. We will still see the couple in Rome exchanging complicit moments during the filming of Ocean's Twelve ... However, when Mr. & Mrs. Smith resumed in August 2004, everything accelerated. In October, as the film crew moves to the Amalfi Coast, Pitt and Jolie no longer shy away from sharing the same sequel with Maddox or cooing during their public appearances. Jennifer Aniston, on the other hand, seems to have resigned herself to the possibility of the worst. In London, where she is filming the thriller Derailed, she goes on drunken nights in the city's trendy clubs or in her suite, at the Dorchester Hotel, throughout the fall. Brad's visit to the English capital promoting Ocean's Twelve is no pretext for privacy.
Upon their return to Los Angeles (on different flights!), The couple canceled for mysterious reasons the big birthday party planned for Brad's 41st birthday. It must be said that the "Angelina factor" now poisons until the rare moments when Pitt and Aniston find themselves face to face. In addition to the gossip that surges, Angelina's repeated phone calls to Brad and Jennifer's home (including a hastily interrupted “phone s-x” session) and the actor's continual allusions to his acting partner (including he admires humanitarian commitments) have long shaken the stability of the couple. In an interview with the Italian Vanity Fair, Brad hints at the possibility of a separation ("I'm not sure that staying with a person all his life is part of our nature"), while emphasizing his desire to have children as soon as possible. At the same time, strangely enough, Angelina Jolie was just refused the adoption of a second son in Russia ...
Nothing seems to fit in this threesome that does not say its name. Some relatives try to deny the obvious, such as Brad's mother, Jane, who gives Aniston a ring marked with a "P" on December 25, 2004. The Pitt couple resolve to spend New Year's Day on Anguilla Island with their loved ones, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. But this trip was not a honeymoon or a new beginning: less than a week later, on the famous January 7, 2005, the break was made official. How can we justify such a romantic masquerade extending over more than a year? One explanation could lie in the fact that Brad and Jennifer's assets amounted to more than 225 million euros (with, among others, four residences, a yacht that belonged to Elizabeth Taylor and a lush production company, Plan B ).
By claiming that their separation was the result of a long reflection and
that they remained friends - to the point of throwing a big party for
Jennifer's birthday on February 11 or showing up together at parties before
the Oscars -, the Pitt couple would have neither more nor less preserved their
financial interests. Less convinced by these stories of calculations than by
remorse felt by the unfaithful husband, Andrew Morton quotes a psychologist
close to the three protagonists: “Brad was targeted by Angelina. But he was
bored with Jen, he was tired of seeing her so dependent and carrying her at
arm's length."
By the time the divorce proceedings were initiated by Aniston in March, Pitt and Jolie had only to formalize their relationship. They did so by being photographed with Maddox on a Kenyan beach in April, then parodying an average American family in the pages of W magazine in July. That same month, they welcomed little Zahara, an Ethiopian baby saved from death. Less than a year later, Shiloh, their first biological child, joined their blended family… "I would never sleep with a married man", Angelina swore in 2004. By removing her wedding ring every morning on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt made sure, it is true, that they did not transgress anything. In appearance, at least ...
