Jennifer Garner opened up about one of the most challenging days of her career, returning to work on Dallas Buyers Club just a few weeks after giving birth to her third child.
Speaking with Hits Radio My life in the cinema In the YouTube series, the actress, 53, recalled the intensity of filming the Oscar-nominated drama, which was shot in just 21 days, shortly after welcoming her son Samuel with Ben Affleck in 2012.
The pace left almost no room to breathe, and for a breastfeeding mother, that presented a very specific and painful problem.
“I was breastfeeding and we were filming. It was the first day, and when it was time to put my baby to bed, suddenly, my [body] exploded,” he said.
In other productions there had always been a natural window, a turn of the camera, a brief pause, where she could slip away. There was nothing in this one. “I couldn’t do it in that movie,” he said simply.
The emotion of it all caught her on set. Leaving her newborn was already difficult and the physical discomfort pushed her over the edge.
“Leaving him with the third child was very difficult and I was a mess. I started crying and I can’t stop crying. I’m not supposed to cry. And Matthew said, ‘What’s going on with you?'” she recalled.
When he explained what he needed but didn’t want to slow down production, McConaughey didn’t hesitate.
“He said, ‘Guys, I need a minute.’ And he said, ‘Go and do what you need to do.’ And so the rest of that movie, every time I needed to pump [he would break]”.
The gesture meant a lot to Garner, particularly considering what McConaughey and co-star Jared Leto were going through with their own bodies at the time: They were both going on extreme diets to lose weight for their respective roles.
