The two stars had been quietly dating for two years when Tate was cast as the love interest of Aniston's character Rachel Green.

• Sep 7, 2018

AceShowbiz - Actor Tate Donovan was "dying inside" while portraying Jennifer Aniston's TV crush on hit sitcom Friends as the real-life couple was actually breaking up at the time.

The two stars had been quietly dating for two years when Tate was cast as the love interest of Aniston's character Rachel Green, but by the time it came to shoot his guest appearances in 1994, the pair had already split.

Tate was "happy" to be a part of the Friends phenomenon, but it was a rough time emotionally as the new exes found themselves filming romantic scenes together on set while they nursed broken hearts behind closed doors.

"The only bummer was Jennifer and I were breaking up at the time," he recalls to Us Weekly. "And so that was tricky to sort of act, and act like we are just meeting each other (on screen), and falling in love, or whatever, interested in each other, when we're sort of breaking up. That was just tough."

Tate reveals their personal turmoil actually led him to cut short his stint on the series, because the emotions were just too raw for the pair to continue acting together.

"It was just six episodes. I mean, only because we were breaking up," he explains. "We were like, 'Hey, can we not keep doing this? 'Cause this is really painful and tough.'"

Although his relationship with Jennifer didn't work out, that didn't stop the actress and her castmates, including Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, and Matt LeBlanc, from giving Tate a warm welcome when he arrived for his first day on the job - a stark contrast to comments another fellow guest star, Kathleen Turner, recently made about being ignored by the group onset.

"Those six people were amazing to me. They were fantastic," Tate, 54, smiles. "It wasn't cliquey for me at all. I was lucky.

"The good thing that came out of it (their split) was that everyone was really cool about it, and really as helpful as they could be. In other words, they were just compassionate, very compassionate about the whole break-up. It was sort of like I proved that, 'Hey, I guess I'm a pro.' If you can go through a tough break-up, and still do your job, then you're a pro. It was good. It was really ultimately a great experience of how people can treat you really well, and you still do your job even though you're sort of dying inside."

Tate wasn't the only one of Jennifer's real-life lovers to film a guest feature on Friends - back in 2001, her then-husband, Brad Pitt, also made an appearance on the beloved comedy. They went on to divorce in 2005.