You learn a lot of new things everyday when you trawl the internet as part of your job. Apparently the original version of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy involved plane crashes and killer orangutans. Go figure.
Anyway, the latest thing to catch my attention is the rumour that Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston were a couple back in the day. Yeah, I was surprised too.
Before Paul became Phoebe’s squeeze on Friends, he and Jennifer starred together in the 1998 romcom The Object of my Affection. Rumour has it that the pair grew close during the filming of that movie and dated for a bit. Is there truth to this rumour or is it something people made up?
Naturally I had to investigate this further because it just seems so unexpected and yet it also kind of makes sense on paper. After some digging around, I discovered that Paul and Jennifer were both already in relationships when they filmed The Object of my Affection, just not with each other.
Jennifer was apparently dating Tate Donovan while Paul was with his now-wife Julie Yaeger and has been since 1995. Just to put a kibosh on the rumour that the pair were an item, Gossip Cop reached out to Jennifer’s rep about the rumour and got a polite “no they did not date”.
There you go, Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston did not in fact date in the 90s. I’m actually kind of disappointed about this because the rumour originally blew my mind and I had a bunch of Friends jokes lined up that I had to scrap.
I’m willing to bet that this is something Paul and Jennifer laugh over whenever they find themselves working on projects together. We’ll probably never know the truth but hey, this whole rumour thing was a fun ride while it lasted.