Jennifer Garner has found a role that feels closer to her than most, and she’s been candid about exactly why.
The actress, 54, stars in the new Peacock series The five star weekend as Hollis Shaw, a famous chef living life after the sudden death of her husband.
When Hollis’s world begins to fall apart, she gathers her closest friends from different chapters of her life to spend a weekend at her Nantucket beach house, 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 said PEOPLE that Garner “had really great ideas” both in front of and behind the camera, drawing on her own life experience in ways that shaped the show.
“Jen is 50, Hollis’s age. She has older children. So she had a lot of very smart ideas about Caroline’s story,” Brunstetter said, referring to the story involving Hollis’ college daughter, played by Harlow Jane, struggling to process her grief.
Garner also brought a personal understanding of what it’s 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, Brunstetter says, a really easy creative partnership.
“She’s very approachable and very 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 herself, the project’s appeal was multi-layered.
“There were a lot of attractions to doing this show for me,” he said. PEOPLE. “The idea of not leading a group of women but of being part of a group of actresses who had beginnings, developments and endings of complex stories with so much grist for the mill between all of them and stories that are complicated and misunderstood.”
The themes of grief, motherhood, fame and romance woven together only added to that attraction.
One connection between the actress and the character was particularly simple.
“I would definitely say 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.”
He Five star weekend now streaming on Peacock.
