Jennifer Aniston responds to her ‘Last of Us’ Easter egg: ‘Of all things to survive the apocalypse’

The saying goes that the only things to survive the apocalypse will be Twinkies and roaches. But add Jennifer Aniston to that list.

The Friends star had a good sense of humor upon learning that she will make it through to the other side, according to HBO horror series The Last of Us. On the April 13 season 2 premiere, Bella Ramsey‘s Ellie comes across a 2003 issue of PEOPLE magazine featuring Aniston sporting a radiant smile on the cover.

“Of all the things to survive the apocalypse 🤣,” she wrote on her Instagram story on Tuesday, over a video of Ellie examining the “Best & Worst Dressed” issue. She then tagged the official show account, adding a cheeky “👀” emoji.

In the episode, written and directed by co-showrunner Craig Mazin, Ellie and Isabela Merced‘s Dina, out on patrol, wander into a ransacked store where Ellie falls through the floor into the basement. There she comes across the magazine, crucially dated to 2003, when the pandemic that hastened the total social collapse at the center of the series first kicked off.

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Aniston has never appeared on the post-apocalyptic drama, which is based on the series of video games created by Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley and first released in 2013. But this isn’t her only connection to the show.

Last month, Aniston sparked rumors of a romance with Ramsey’s costar Pedro Pascal. The pair were spotted leaving the Sunset Tower Hotel in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Early last year, Aniston and Pascal were first connected when running into each other on the red carpet for the 2024 Critics Choice Awards. Pascal crashed Aniston and Reese Witherspoon‘s interview about their hit AppleTV+ series The Morning Show, prompting Aniston to ask, “Do you want to be on it?” When Pascal asked if his potential part would involve “anything romantic with anybody,” Aniston joked, “All of us.”

Aniston, a veteran of sitcoms and the occasional dark comedy like The Morning Show, would have to draw on an entirely different set of skills for The Last of Us, which is unrelentingly dark. The long-awaited second season has so far doubled down on the bleakness and pathos of the first season, culminating in Sunday’s shocker regarding Pascal’s Joel.

“I think it was a hushed thing, like scary words that no one wants to utter,” Ramsey said of the twist for Entertainment Weekly‘s recent The Last of Us digital cover story. “It feels like too big of a thing to just speak about it.”

The Last of Us season 2 drops new episodes every Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.