Jennifer Aniston owes a lot to Friends, including introducing her to her first dog, Norman.
“I’ve always had rescue dogs. My first dog, actually, was Norman, whose name is tattooed on my foot. Normie, I actually got from the show Friends,” the actress shared on the Wednesday, September 10, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “He was on Friends.”
Stephen Colbert was jealous of the late dog’s job on the hit sitcom, joking, “The dog was on Friends? You know, I auditioned for Friends and never got on.”
Aniston went on to note that Norman made an appearance on Season 2, Episode 6, of the NBC series, “the one where Joey [Matt LeBlanc] and Chandler [Matthew Perry] babysit little, Ross’ [David Schwimmer] baby, whose name I can’t remember — Ben. And they lost the baby. They left the baby on a bus.”
“So, they leave the baby on the bus. They’re running through New York City streets, trying to find the bus that they left the baby on,” she shared. “And as they’re running through the streets, you know how New York has these wonderful dog walkers with 20 dogs on leashes, and Norman was one of those dogs.”
Mike Ansell / ©Warner Brothers / Courtesy: Everett Collection
While filming the episode, Aniston said she asked the show’s animal trainers if any of the dogs were up for adoption. “And they said, ‘Well, we actually have a dog who we’re going to retire because he’s very stubborn and doesn’t do what we tell him, and he never hits his mark,'” she said. “And so, I retired him, and then, he became mine. And he was only 1. He was only 1 years old.”
Norman, a Welsh corgi-terrier mix, died at the age of 15 in 2011. “He was an old dog and it was just his time,” a rep for Aniston told People in May 2011. She later shared her dog Dolly, a white German shepherd, with her ex-husband, Justin Theroux. The exes said goodbye to their shared pup in July 2019.
“Tonight, at sunset, after a heroic struggle… our most loyal family member and protector, Dolly A. laid down her sword and shield. 
She was surrounded by her entire family,” Theroux wrote alongside Instagram pics of Dolly’s final days. “‘The one that never deserts, the one that never proves ungrateful… is the dog— faithful and true, even in death.’ -George Vest. Rest In Peace Dolly.”
Aniston paid tribute to Dolly in a June 2023 Instagram post. “Dolly forever 
,” she captioned pics of herself and her late pup.
Aniston is currently a proud dog mom to pups Lord Chesterfield and Clyde, the latter of whom inspired her new children’s cookbook, Cook with Clydeo. “These are just fun recipes for parents to make with their kids in the kitchen. They’re very simple,” she told Colbert of the book, the proceeds of which go to The Clydeo Fund, which supports animal rescue organizations across the globe.
Before her interview on Wednesday’s The Late Show, Aniston joined Colbert for a segment of “Rescue Dog Rescue,” in which the host and a celebrity guest convince viewers to adopt dogs by sharing hilarious lies about each pup. On the show, Colbert noted that the segment has a “perfect record of every single dog getting adopted.”
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