There’s perhaps no more primal variety of feud in the world than the sibling rivalry, and it can get exponentially worse if those siblings happen to work in the same industry and compete for similar jobs. Fortunately, Dakota and Elle Fanning now have nothing but love and respect for one another, but there’s one long-ago project of Dakota’s that Elle just couldn’t get behind, thanks to a healthy dose of jealousy.
In a new cover interview with Net-a-Porter’s Porter magazine, Elle was discussing how she handles rejection when she recalled one of the first times she was turned down by a casting director. “I had an [audition] to be on Friends once. I might be remembering this wrong but I think I was gonna be one of Phoebe’s triplets,” she said. “I auditioned for it but I didn’t get it and I was like, ‘I’m boycotting the show, I’m never watching this again.’ Then my sister was on it and I refused to watch the episode,” she continued. “I was like, ‘I am not watching this!'”
Phoebe’s triplets appeared in episodes from 1998 to 2003, meaning the now-20-year-old Elle was auditioning for the role sometime between the ages of a few months old to five years old (Dakota was 10 when she appeared in an episode of the show’s final season), long enough ago that her childhood grudge has since worn off. In fact, Elle shared in the interview that she and Dakota are currently on the lookout for a project in which they can act side-by-side, and have a dream of starting a production company together, named after their grandmother: “We call her Gaba, so it could be Gaba Productions,” she said.
Plus, not only does Elle now fully support all of her sister’s onscreen projects, but she also even regularly revisits ones from around the dark days of her Friends boycott. “Dakota doesn’t know this, but I, like, will sometimes watch old videos of Dakota on talk shows when she was like, yeah, like six,” Elle told W in 2016. “She was so cute and I’ll just, like, watch them over and over again and they make me cry for some reason, but I’m very nostalgic.” No word, however, on whether she’s ever gone back and watched that fateful Friends episode. [Source]