BEVERLY HILLS—Jennifer Aniston walks into a room dressed fully in white and confused about where she’s supposed to be headed. This isn’t Central Perk in 1994, but you’d hardly know it as Aniston’s elusive eye colour brightens the room (there are numerous online forums dedicated to figuring out the true shade of her irises) while a legion of men jump to her aid to point out where she’s supposed to be. It’s a testament to Aniston’s aura that 20 years after storming into a coffee shop in a wedding dress as Rachel Green on the pilot episode of TV’s Friends, she can still easily draw the attention of an entire room.

Aside from the looks, much has changed since then. At a Beverly Hills media conference with costars Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis for Horrible Bosses 2 (opening November 26), Aniston, who reprises her role as sexual deviant Dr. Julia Harris, is comfortable even among some of comedy’s biggest names. It’s no surprise, as the actress actually does some of the heaviest comedic lifting in the film, her character crossing the line even more than she did in the first installment.

“Honestly, I think the writers called just to say, ‘How far can we go with Dr. Julia?’ ” Aniston recalls. “I basically said, ‘Go as far as you can go, as long as we aren’t insulting or offending too many people.’ I think it just rose itself to the occasion. But the dialogue was great; the situations, I think those were all great. It just lent itself to great humour.”

Though Aniston definitely has some experience playing sexy characters in comedies (the original Bosses, plus playing a stripper in 2013’s We’re the Millers), there were moments when even she was a little bit squeamish. One involved looking at a security monitor with her coworkers while it rolled out footage of her sodomizing Bateman. “Oh, one of the most uncomfortable scenes ever, ’cause you’re just talking about it like it’s a funny TV show. I find it extremely entertaining the way she speaks because I don’t think that to her she’s saying anything important,” Aniston says, referring to the way her character casually talks about stuff like getting triple-teamed. “I think to her it’s the same as describing the ingredients to a wonderful soufflé or ‘What are we doing this weekend?’ ”

While she is undeniably in demand for more comedic roles—both The Break-Up (2006) and Just Go With It (2011) crushed it at the box office—the 45-year-old has lately been going in another direction, taking roles in smaller, ambitious projects. There was this year’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Life of Crime that saw Aniston play outside her comfort zone as a kidnapped woman about to be left by her rich husband. But she really goes for it with Cake, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. As a woman who’s dealing with chronic pain and loss, Aniston is downright spiteful, a complete departure from anything she’s done before, in a role that’s even fetched extremely early Oscar whispers.

“I love doing both. I mean, I think one accesses one part of my brain and the other accesses another,” replies the actor, when asked about the kinds of parts she prefers. “But any time I approach any character—comedy or drama—it’s grounded in reality, coming from the truth. There’s comedy in drama, there’s drama in comedy, I don’t find the two sort of exclusive of one another.”

It’s strange. As Aniston leaves the conference, parting the sea of reporters clamouring around her with the ease of Moses, it’s nothing like her entrance. This time she seems to know exactly where she’s going.