For Jennifer Aniston, the bond of sisterhood is paramount. She and Reese Witherspoon realized they were kindred spirits back in 2000 when Witherspoon made a guest appearance on Friends.

From 2018 onwards, the pair—Aniston affectionately refers to Witherspoon as her ‘sister from another mister’—have been both co-producing and acting in the Apple TV+ series, The Morning Show.

The series is a huge hit, and both actresses are said to be paid more than $2million an episode (£1,475,000).

And into this circle of A-list sisterhood they have now brought French actress Marion Cotillard to play a media executive.

This week, Cotillard, 49, received support from both Aniston and Witherspoon on the red carpet for the launch of the show’s fourth season, where Aniston, now 56, warmly embraced her for the cameras.

Behind the scenes, there has been much gushing too, with Cotillard describing Aniston as ‘a beautiful soul’ and ‘inspiring’ to Glamour magazine this month.

Aniston returned the compliment by telling the magazine that the woman she first met at an awards show 18 years ago was a ‘walking beam of sunshine and love and beauty and talent’.

So far, so saccharine, but, whisper it, could there be more to the Cotillard casting than a case of women raising each other up?

As co-producers, Witherspoon, 49, and Aniston had the power to OK – or even suggest – Cotillard for the role. While her ability and looks are undeniable, she is among dozens of European actresses with similar attributes.

But in one respect, Cotillard is in a category of her own.

According to Hollywood chatter, she is the only woman to have made Angelina Jolie suffer ‘poisonous’ jealousy – back in 2016, when Jolie was married to Brad Pitt and he and Cotillard filmed the war drama Allied.

Pitt was, of course, Aniston’s first husband, and while they are now on very warm terms and she has no hard feelings about his falling for Jolie in 2005 when they co-starred in Mr & Mrs Smith, let us not forget he was still married to Aniston at the time.

Aniston apparently even offered to go to court to vouch for Pitt, 61, when he was being ‘destroyed’ by Jolie in legal rows.

So what does the casting of an actress who had a walk-on part in the end of his second marriage mean?

Some believe Aniston’s love-in with Cotillard shows she absolutely has not forgiven Angelina Jolie for stealing her husband.

For, as those who were on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith can attest, Jolie’s wooing of Pitt extended to sending her son Maddox to his trailer to ask him to hang out, and to discussing sexual positions with her married co-star.

Intoxicating, raunchy, undomesticated Jolie apparently fully turned his head. Pitt later admitted that the film depicted him and Jolie falling in love for real.

Against such a backdrop, it’s hard not to conclude that if something did happen between Pitt and Cotillard on the set of Allied, Jolie had it coming – and Aniston had every right to feel delighted.

One Hollywood source, who had a ringside seat on the disintegration of Pitt and Jolie’s marriage in 2016, tells me that Pitt ‘would rave about Marion’s French elegance and style.

‘Marion is probably the woman Angelina hates most in the world. It’s the only time that she has ever shown any signs of jealousy.

‘It was poisonous. One problem was that Angelina was fully aware that their own romance had sparked while filming Mr & Mrs Smith, so there was a real fear of history repeating itself.

‘Quite a few people thought that Marion had bewitched Brad in the film.’

The Jolie-Pitt marriage ended after a fight on a private plane, which mostly seemed to amount to a clash over parenting styles, in September 2016.

The usually well-informed Page Six section of the New York Post said at the time: ‘Angelina Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt after learning he was cheating on her with his sexy co-star.

‘She hired a private eye because she felt that he was fooling around with her on the set, and it turns out, he was.’

Cotillard and her long-term partner Guillaume Canet denied the story.

On the red carpet for the premiere of Allied, Pitt was at war with Jolie and – grim-faced throughout – didn’t look at or touch Cotillard. That was also the day when the FBI announced that Pitt wouldn’t face charges over the plane fracas.

That was a low point for him, with his children largely living with his ex-wife and his reputation sullied. He needed a friend and the most surprising twist of all is that the woman he cast aside for Jolie was willing to stand up for him.

As Jennifer Aniston said in an interview in 2005: ‘I love Brad – I really love him. I will love him for the rest of my life. He’s a fantastic man. We spent seven very intense years together; we taught each other a lot – about healing, and about fun. We helped each other through a lot, and I really value that. It was a beautiful, complicated relationship.’

Their enduring bond came into the open in January 2020 at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Pitt and Aniston bumped into each other backstage and there was flirty hand-holding and locked eyes. The internet went crazy.

It turned out that Aniston, who had split from her second husband Justin Theroux two years before, had invited Pitt to her 50th birthday party the previous year, and he had attended her Christmas party, too. Many said the pair seemed to still be in love.

Sadly, the reality was that Pitt was dating other women and their friendship reflected Aniston’s superlative forgiveness.

Pitt is now happy with jewellery designer Ines de Ramon, and Aniston is in a new romance with meditation coach Jim Curtis.

But there’s a sense that their romance and marriage was a golden time for them both.

They were introduced by their agents in 1988 and wed two years later. He promised on that day to ‘split the difference on the thermostat’ with his bride, and Aniston said that she would make his favourite banana milkshakes.

Pitt gamely took a cameo role in Friends to support her. Aniston talked about wanting to have babies in 2004. And yet the marriage ended a year later.

Of finding out that her husband was romancing Jolie, she said in 2005: ‘I was shocked. I’d be a robot if I said I didn’t feel moments of anger, of hurt, of embarrassment.’

Speaking in 2008, three years after they split, Aniston told Vogue that she couldn’t ‘remember the darkness’, adding: ‘In the end, we really had an amicable split. It wasn’t mean and hateful and all of this stuff that they tried to create about “Brad can’t talk to Jen” and “Jen can’t talk to Brad”, it just didn’t happen. The marriage didn’t work out.’

Sources close to Pitt say they have a fond friendship and want the best for each other. Aniston said: ‘Brad and I are buddies. Like, we’re friends and we speak.’

One Hollywood insider believes Pitt will have apologised to Aniston as a part of his AA practice. Pitt said in 2019 that he had removed his ‘drinking privileges’ and joined an Alcoholics Anonymous support group.

The marriage might not have worked, but after a lot of therapy on both sides, it seems Aniston and Pitt have navigated their way to an enduring friendship.

But, as underlined by those cosy scenes with Cotillard, there appears to be no such forgiveness for the woman who wrecked Jen’s dream.