We all have those celebrities who we’d love to meet in person, and who would simultaneously probably scare the heck out of us if we ever actually encountered them. That goes double for the “celebrity crush” that many of us probably have (or at least have had at some point in our lives). Of course, if you become a celebrity, the odds of meeting your celebrity crush go up exponentially (as Winston Duke and others have confirmed). Unfortunately, meeting that person can go horribly wrong, as it did when James McAvoy met Jennifer Aniston.
Appearing on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, the Speak No Evil star admitted his celebrity crush when he was younger was Friends star Jennifer Aniston. He then told a story about a time he actually got to meet her. Shortly after he got to Hollywood he met actress Lucy Liu at a party, which led to him finding himself standing next to his crush. McAvoy explained…
I did meet her and it wasn’t great. Not because she’s not great. I was at a party when I was really young I was like 22 in L.A. and I met Lucy Liu and Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me, and she was like ‘Come meet my friends.’ There was a big circle of her friends and one of them happened to be Jennifer Aniston, and I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston.
Under normal circumstances, this might be a perfect setup for meeting a celebrity. You’re about to get introduced to a celebrity in a personal way by somebody who knows her! Maybe it’ll go well! Maybe he, like Lucy Liu, could have been pals with Aniston. If McAvoy’s date is right Aniston was one of the celebrities who married Brad Pitt, and should have been with him around that time, so the young actor could have potentially met somebody else who was the celebrity crush for a lot of other people, too.
However, it’s around this time when things went sideways for the young actor. His “in” to meeting Aniston disappeared right in front of his eyes. He continued…
And just as she was like ‘Hey guys, meet my new friend James,’ instead of saying that she got pulled aside by a guy she went to high school with and she was like, ‘Oh my god.’ She went away, and I was just left standing with all these people going, ‘Hey what’s up? I’m new in town.’
In one quick moment, James McAvoy went from meeting some cool people to being the random guy standing there who nobody knew. Even if you weren’t standing in front of your celebrity crush this sounds awkward af. (Though maybe not as awkward as Kelly Clarkson’s famous fan encounter in the bathroom.) McAvoy reiterated that Aniston was lovely, but the situation just didn’t work for anybody.
Today James McAvoy is a sex symbol (and probably somebody’s celebrity crush). He’s getting praise for his role in Speak No Evil which will likely have a lot of people noticing him. Hopefully, if anybody who feels that way meets him things will go slightly better.