Following Valentine’s Day weekend, Wuthering Heights won out among new 2026 movie releases as the buzzy movie of the moment, and it dominated the box office, too. Now, Jennifer Aniston is even adding to the chatter of the smutty epic starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi by reminding people of the time the book was in Friends, and it made me chuckle.
Aniston took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a throwback clip from Friends circa 1998 in honor of Wuthering Heights’ release. Check it out below:
The comedy actress shared this clip from Season 5, Episode 9 “The One With Ross’ Sandwich”. In the episode, Rachel joins the literature class Phoebe is in, but they butt heads. However, when she attends, she’s late to class and asks her what happened in the book they are reading for class, Wuthering Heights, and Phoebe has to explain it to her.
I find it hilarious that Aniston took the time to post this clip along with the comment “Thanks to Margot and Jacob, no reading required” along with some funny emojis. And hey, she’s right. If the episode had taken place in the present day, Rachel could have simply gone to see Emerald Fennell’s take on the classic book and would have a better sense of what’s going on in the class. That’s probably what she would have done if given the option.
Though, as things tend to go with book-to-screen adaptations, the Wuthering Heights movie is not only not a word-for-word adaptation, it only covers about half of the novel from Emily Brontë. When the first trailer came out, the movie received some whitewashing backlash for Jacob Elordi playing Heathcliff when he’s thought to be a person of color.
Anyways, in the episode, you may remember that Phoebe gets frustrated with Rachel for not reading the class’s reading material and stealing her analysis from her. So during the next session she makes up things for Rachel to repeat in class that humiliates her. This leads to Phoebe and Rachel to talk about the different ways they were approaching the class.
Phoebe actually wanted to learn because she didn’t get to go to high school, while Rachel wasn’t thinking too much of it. The episode ends with Monica joining the class and hilariously being a way worse partner to Phoebe than Rachel was due to her competitive nature.
Jennifer Aniston reminding us of this episode has us imagining if Phoebe and Rachel would have gone to see the movie together and what they would have thought of the Wuthering Heights ending. I know I’m picturing Phoebe being the book purist who’s so not into it, and Rachel being all over it.
You can check out our Wuthering Heights review and go see the movie for yourself in theaters now.
