LOS ANGELES – Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler have been friends for decades – and it shows.
In a Zoom chat with The Straits Times for Murder Mystery 2 – a sequel to their 2019 comedy whodunnit Murder Mystery – the pair tease and make each other laugh as only old friends do.
Aniston, 54, and Sandler, 56, first met at a restaurant in Los Angeles when he was 22, and she was 20 and dating a friend of his.
And as their comedy careers soared – Aniston’s with the hit series Friends (1994 to 2004) and films such as We’re The Millers (2013), Sandler’s with a stint in the 1990s on sketch show Saturday Night Live and movies such as The Wedding Singer (1998) – they continued to maintain a close friendship that Aniston has described as being “like family”.
This is the third movie they have made together, the first being the 2011 romantic comedy Just Go With It.
And they had such a blast on the first Murder Mystery – playing a couple who go on holiday to rekindle their marriage but end up being framed for a murder – that they decided to return for the sequel, which premieres on Netflix on Friday.
Asked if there is anything that still surprises them about each other after so many years, Aniston shakes her head.
But Sandler offers: “She stays in shape still, I’ll tell you that much. Not afraid to work out.”
“And I am afraid,” he says with a laugh.
“You’re still wonderfully… not as physical as you want to be,” Aniston says tactfully, muffling a giggle.
Sandler also adds that his co-star has “always been deep”.
“She loves good movies and loves talking about them.”
Aniston confirms this. “I like going deep. I like to talk about stuff. I try to make Adam cry as much as I can.”
Sandler insists he is not much of a crier, but reveals that he did get emotional when he went to Aniston’s house to console her after the death of her father, Greek-American daytime soap star John Aniston, who died in November 2022 at age 89.
“We kind of teared up together,” Sandler recalls.
“But that was circumstantial,” says Aniston. In normal situations, “we just have fun together”.
That they did while working on the Murder Mystery movies.
For Sandler, part of the draw is the loving marriage of their characters, former New York police officer Nick Spitz and his wife Audrey, a murder mystery aficionado who now works with Nick in their own detective agency.
“It’s fun to be a good married couple,” says Sandler, who in real life is married to long-time partner Jackie Titone, 48, and has two daughters aged 14 and 16.
Aniston – who is now single, but was married to actors Brad Pitt, 59, and Justin Theroux, 51 – says: “The relationship that we have in real life makes the movie-making process so much more enjoyable. We’ve also shot in beautiful locations.”
Co-starring Mark Strong and Melanie Laurent, the second film was shot in Paris and Hawaii, with Hawaii doubling as the private island where the Spitzes attend a friend’s wedding and find themselves drawn into another high-stakes murder case.
As with the first movie, “we had a great cast, a great time and funny interactions”, Sandler says.
“And I like that there were a lot of action sequences and stunts, and that we do it together as a married couple. It’s pretty fresh,” adds the star, who recently received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humour.
The actors have been pleased about the mini revival of the murder mystery genre in Hollywood, heralded by the success of films such as the Knives Out franchise (2019 to 2022), starring Daniel Craig.
“There weren’t that many. I guess it’s flaring up again,” Sandler says.
And Aniston says the joy of such films is that “not only does it feel interactive for the audience because you’re always trying to figure out who did it, but you also get a great ensemble cast and it’s just fun”.
“They’re just really entertaining.”
Murder Mystery 2 premieres on Netflix on Friday.
