Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman appeared cozier than ever while speaking about a planned third season of their HBO drama Big Little Lies — but there’s no room in their hangouts for Jennifer Aniston, who’s feeling left out and annoyed, sources exclusively tell Closer.

“Reese and Nicole are so close. They’re in touch nearly every day, whether it’s just a simple text or a deep conversation, it’s gone way past a work friendship,” says an insider.

Nicole, 56, and Reese, 48, recently reunited for a Vanity Fair video feature shot five years since they began production on their popular show Big Little Lies — and teased that a third season of the series is “in good shape.”

As they embraced in a big hug and sat down next to each other in the video interview, Reese gushed, “I’m so excited to do this,” as she jokingly added, “because I don’t get to see you enough in person!”

Nicole clarified, “Well, we see each other quite a bit so this is not like, ‘Reunited, and it feels so good!'”

In fact, the two are often out and about on gal-pal dates. “We see each other a lot in Nashville. We walk in the woods, we laugh,” Reese explained, as Nicole added, “And sort of process everything.” Reese continued, “[We] figure out all the problems, solve all the problems, and then… ‘See you later!'”

reese witherspoon, nicole kidman
John Shearer/Getty Images for the Country Music Association

That camaraderie between the two stings. According to Closer‘s source, “They’re not snobby about it but when they are in the same city, they really prefer to catch up one-on-one, and it’s hard for people not to feel left out. They don’t mean any harm by it, and actually they do invite Jen along quite a lot of the time, but it’s not gone unnoticed by her that they’re thick as thieves.”

In fact, the insider adds that the Friends star, 55, has “felt like the third wheel lately when she’s been in their company, and that’s got her a little down — no one likes to feel left out.”

Jennifer and Nicole worked together on the 2011 romantic comedy Just Go With It, but more recently she’s costarred alongside Reese since 2019 in The Morning Show — even if their working relationship on the Apple TV+ series seemed to get off to a rocky start.

“Things were difficult with Jen and Reese in the early days of The Morning Show, but they patched it up and Jen was really optimistic it would lead to a much tighter friendship but it’s just become this rock-solid acquaintanceship versus the BFF situation that Reese and Nicole have,” the insider says.

Plus, Jennifer has always been grateful for Nicole’s friendship — revealing that the Moulin Rouge star “helped me out on a lot of hard things that I was going through” at the time — so it’s clear she wants to be a part of their girl gang.

“It doesn’t help that Jen looks up to Nicole and would love to see more of her too,” explains an insider, “but Reese is hogging her.”