Jennifer Garner has found a role that hits closer to home than most, and she’s been honest about why.
The actress, 54, leads Peacock’s new series Five star weekend as Hollis Shaw, a celebrity chef navigating life after the sudden death of her husband.
As Hollis’ world begins to unravel, she gathers her closest friends from different chapters of her life for a weekend at her beach house in Nantucket, surrounded by a cast that includes Chloë Sevigny, Regina Hall, D’Arcy Carden and Gemma Chan.
Garner is also an executive producer on the series, and her contributions went far beyond acting.
Showrunner Bekah Brunstetter told PEOPLE that Garner “had really good ideas” both in front of and behind the camera and drew on his own life experience in ways that shaped the show.
“Jen is in her 50s, Hollis’ age. She has grown children. So she had a lot of really smart insights about the Caroline story,” Brunstetter said, referring to the story involving Hollis’ college-aged daughter, played by Harlow Jane, struggling to process her grief.
Garner also brought a personal understanding of what it feels like to grow up in a small community and become a household name, something Hollis experiences on screen and Garner knows from her own upbringing in West Virginia.
“What fame does to your friendships and your relationships,” Brunstetter said. “She had a lot of insight there.”
Working with Garner was, by Brunstetter’s account, a really easy creative partnership.
“She’s so approachable and so warm, and there’s nothing about her that makes you feel like you can’t touch her. There was a lot of trust there, which is really nice.”
For Garner himself, the project’s appeal was multi-layered.
“There were so many pulls to doing this show for me,” she shared PEOPLE. “The idea of not leading a group of women, but of being part of an ensemble of female actresses who all had beginnings, middles and ends to complex storylines with so much grist for the mill between them all and stories that are complicated and misunderstood.”
The themes of grief, motherhood, fame and romance woven throughout only added to that draw.
A connection between actress and character was particularly straightforward.
“I would definitely say that food is my love language. I share that with Hollis,” Garner said with a laugh, adding, “I honestly think she’s a better cook than I am, but I learned how to make scallops from her.”
The Five star weekend now streaming on Peacock.
