Jennifer Aniston goes back to bad

In “Horrible Bosses 2,” Jennifer Aniston’s sexually predatory Dr. Julia character from the first film finds herself in a setting that shouldn’t be that surprising: a support group for sexual compulsives. Only she’s not necessarily there with the most honest of intentions. Apparently she was faking the first step. “I think the intention was to maybe seek help, but I think what she ultimately found out was that this is just like chum for her,” Aniston says of the scene. “What a wonderful sort of easy [opportunity]. I’m sure she’d lost all of her patients, she’d done all of them, so maybe this was just another wonderful, innocent way to find more prey.”

Dr. Julia is a character is one that got Aniston a lot of acclaim the first time around, particularly because it involved more raunch and raciness than audiences were necessarily expecting from her, and that’s something she reveled in. “She’s a hard one to let go of. I didn’t get enough of her. It was just like a little In-N-Out burger, and then she was done,” Aniston says. “I find it extremely entertaining, the way she speaks, because I don’t really think to her she’s saying anything inappropriate. I think to her it’s describing the ingredients to a wonderful souffle or what are we going to be doing this weekend?”

For a sequel, though, clearly the envelope needed to be pushed. “Honestly, I think the writers called just to say, ‘How far can we go with Dr. Julia?’ I basically said, ‘Go as far as you can go, as long as we’re not insulting or offending too many people.’ I think it rose itself to the occasion. The dialogue was great,” she says.

Well, maybe not all of it was that great. There’s a moment during the outtakes that play over the film’s credits where Aniston flat-out refuses to say an improvised line of dialogue — and now she can’t even remember what it was. “I want to know what the line was! I don’t remember,” she says. “The one thing I wouldn’t say — imagine how bad it must’ve been if I said that I can’t say it. Either it was so bad or I just really didn’t understand it — probably one of the two.”

Luckily, one of the film’s producers is on hand to remind her: It had something to do with using gravy for sexual purposes. “It had to do with gravy? Well there you go, right there,” she says. “I can tell you, gravy is not funny. Sexual gravy is not funny.”

“Horrible Bosses 2” isn’t the only big film Jennifer Aniston has on tap. She’s also been getting rave reviews for her more serious work in the indie drama “Cake,” which can lead to a bit of promotional schizophrenia. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I love doing both,” Aniston says. “I mean, I think one accesses one part of my brain, and the other accesses another. Anytime I approach any character, comedy or drama, it’s grounded in reality coming from the truth. There’s comedy in drama and drama in comedy, I don’t find the two exclusive of one another.”

Follow Ned Ehrbar on Twitter: @nedrick