Debra Messing Reveals She Once Got Jennifer Aniston's 'Rachel' Haircut: 'It Looked Like a Mushroom'

Spoiler alert: she didn't love the look

Jennifer Aniston may have called “The Rachel” the “ugliest haircut” she’s even seen, but it still made an indelible mark on pop culture history. Rachel Green’s layered lob on Friends was one of the most iconic hairstyles of the ’90s, so much so, that it’s immortalized today (we recently broke down the history behind the most iconic photo of the look, here). And as it turns out, celebrities tried to recreate the look just as often as Friends fans. Case in point: Debra Messing, who attempted — and failed — to pull off The Rachel when she was filming Will & Grace.

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“Partway through the series, when Friends was also on TV, we were like, ‘Wait a minute, look at Jennifer Aniston’s hair — everyone loves it,'” she told Refinery29 in a recent interview. “They said, ‘Maybe we should try and make you look like her.’ So I went to Jennifer’s hairstylist and got the cut.”

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When Messing’s hairstylist on set tried to style the look, however, it didn’t quite turn out like Aniston’s.

“But it was a whole debacle when we tried to do it on the show,” she adds. “They literally tried for three hours to straighten my hair like hers. It was so full and poofy that it looked like a mushroom [laughs]. The whole thing was just a disaster, so [the producers] decided to just keep it curly. They were like, ‘This is a problem, we need to find someone who can handle her hair!'”

Have you ever gotten The Rachel? Sound off in the comments below.