Once upon a time, Cole Sprouse played Ross’ adorable son, Ben, on Friends. And he had a huge crush on Jennifer Aniston — so much so that he had a hard time doing his job! “I had a really, really hard time working with Aniston because I was so in love with her,” Sprouse told the New York Post. “I was infatuated. I was speechless. I’d get all bubbly and forget my lines and completely blank… It was so difficult.”
Sprouse, who said he was “maybe 7 or 8” when he started acting on Friends, got to work alongside David Schwimmer (Ross) and Aniston (Rachel), along with the rest of the crew. These days, he plays Jughead on Riverdale, but he hasn’t seen Aniston since his glory days as a little kid pranking people (and getting called out by Rachel for all of his pranks).
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“If I saw any of them, I’d say, ‘Hello,'” Sprouse said. “But it’s been a while and I certainly don’t look the same, so it’d be a hard sell. And if I did look the same, that’d be a little disconcerting.” Well, that’s for sure. For starters, he had bright blonde hair back then. He was also a little shorter.
Though Sprouse’s time on Friends was short-lived, he’s getting a lot more attention for it these days. “I was only in seven episodes, but it’s funny now that people are recognizing me for that because my brother and I have been working since we were 8 months old,” he said.
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The surprising part is that people actually call him “Ben” on the street to this day; he totally gets recognized. “Because Friends is on Netflix, there’s a renewed interest from that,” he said. “Having responded to a Disney show for such a long time, people can call me ‘Ben’ on the street and I will turn around. It’s a funny little process. Now people are calling me Jughead. It’s a strange feeling when you start getting called something new.”
Jughead, Ben, whatever. The point here is that Aniston’s character on Friends was such a big deal back in the day that even an adorable little kid had a crush on her. This is the cutest thing we’ve heard all day, and now we want to go home and binge-watch all seven episodes in which Sprouse appeared as Ben, now that we have this inside scoop about what we imagine was Sprouse’s first real crush. Netflix, here we come.
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