Jennifer Aniston Tackles Those Barack Obama Affair Rumors With A Surprising Confession

Over the course of Jennifer Aniston's stunning transformation as an actor, she's become a popular target of rumors. On October 2, 2024, Aniston was a guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and she took the opportunity to address viral rumors that claimed she and Barack Obama had an affair. The false narrative emerged in July 2024, first on the "Who? Weekly" podcast and then in the August 5, 2024 edition of In Touch Weekly. The magazine's cover teased a split photo of the actor and the former president with provocative text, including, "They're obsessed with each other." Beyond this seemingly spicy facade, however, the article quashed the conjecture.

When Kimmel showed Aniston the In Touch cover, she started laughing and uttered an expletive. "Of all the calls you get from your publicist where you're like, 'Oh no, what's it gonna be?' Or the emails saying some cheesy tabloid's going to make up a story and then it's that," Anniston informed Kimmel. Surprisingly, in this case, Aniston's reaction was sanguine. "I was not mad at it." The "Friends" actor then affirmed that the story was bogus.

Not only had the two never had an affair, but Aniston's time with Barack was limited to a single meeting. In contrast, the actor and Michelle Obama have spent more time together. For instance, Michelle and Aniston posed for a photo promoting the 2018 episodes of Ellen DeGeneres' talk show. Coincidentally, this same pic (with DeGeneres cropped out) was included on the In Touch cover.

Over the decades, Jennifer Aniston's taken different approaches to dealing with rumorsn. Early on, the actor was pretty blasé about media conjecture. "I used to tell myself that tabloids were like comic books, not to be taken seriously, just a soap opera for people to follow when they need a distraction," Aniston wrote in the Huffington Post in 2016. However, at the time, she felt the need to change tactics. Since Aniston had struggled with infertility, she found the continual barrage of pregnancy speculation hurtful and wanted to speak out.

Other times, Aniston's relied on humor. During a 2020 appearance on "The Ellen Show" in response to a query about bizarre rumors that have involved her, Aniston jokingly dismissed the question. "I don't have time for this," she said, before hitting the buzzer to change topics.

With the sheer number of rumors that have circulated about her over the years, Aniston also noted that sometimes people close to her aren't sure what's fact or fiction. For instance, while Aniston was filming in New York, a still photo of her covered in black paint-like substance morphed into a headline that seemed to indicate the incident happened while she was going about her off-camera life. While these articles did go on to explain it was part of a TV show, it appears many people in her circle were duped. Aniston told Jimmy Kimmel, "I was getting endless texts, 'are you okay?' 'what happened to you?'"