Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Gemma Chan and D’Arcy Carden are coming together for a Five Star Weekend.
The series adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s hit novel follows food influencer turned famous chef Hollis Shaw (Garner) as she tries to overcome the grief from her husband’s death on a weekend away in Nantucket, with friends from all different stages of her life.
Garner, who also serves as an executive producer, told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere that she was drawn to the story because “I have never worked with a group of women before. I always feel like I have a bestie or a daughter, which I love, love, love, but I’d never gotten a chance to immerse myself in a story about friendship. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to develop this kind of thing, but it’s really hard to do and in this case, Elin Hilderbrand’s novel is so cleverly drawn — the characters are really rich and full and everybody has their own arc and their own triumphs and tragedies and secrets.”
It also gave the star a chance to showcase her food skills, which she occasionally shows off with her “Pretend Cooking Show” on social media. “My food influencing is more, ‘That’s OK that that fell on the ground,’” Garner joked. “I mean nobody is pretending like I know what I’m doing, but I do encourage people, don’t be scared to start cooking. But yes it was so fun to do scenes where I got to cook and actually knew what I was doing,” with crew members waiting just off camera to eat what she whipped up.
The show features a star-studded group of women, all five of whom had never met each other before the project. It’s also much lighter, more mainstream fare than Sevigny in particular is known for, as she teased, “It’s really nice to go to work and have like a pleasant experience, not to be tortured by whatever. But it was still very complex and I found it more rewarding than a lot of previous experiences. I was very surprised by how challenging and rewarding the acting was.”
It was also led by women behind the scenes, with a female producing team and Maid and Sirens alum Bekah Brunstetter as showrunner. Hilderbrand noted it’s “much-needed material for the women of this country, to have something that did not involve a murder, did not involve zombies or drug heists or bank robberies. It’s just about women’s friendship and it’s very important to me that the press gives it legitimacy even though it’s a women’s story — it’s by women, about women and for women. I think there are a lot of American women who just want to escape, go to Nantucket and think about the friendships they’ve had throughout their lives.”
It’s the second onscreen Hilderbrand adaptation following Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, and while that featured a number of changes to the book, this series is “much closer to the original IP,” the author said.
“I know there’s been a lot of stuff on social media about books that stray too far and readers get upset — my readers will be thrilled,” Hilderbrand emphasized. “There are changes just to make it more propulsive, but it is very close to the heart and soul of my book. No one will be upset!”
The Five Star Weekend is now streaming on Peacock.
