If there’s one thing I’m tuning in for, it’s a female-led series about a woman processing her grief by gathering her closest girl friends together for a cosy getaway at the coast. Throw in some soul shattering secrets, an old flame and an endless list of stars, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for your next binge watch. Enter: The Five Star Weekend.
The eight-part Sky series follows Jennifer Garner as Hollis a food influencer who tragically loses her husband in a car accident. After existing in a grief-fuelled daze, Hollis decides to stop shutting everyone out and invite her closest friends from different chapters of her life for a planned-to-a-tee weekend in their second home in Nantucket.
I had the chance to speak to Jennifer Garner and Gemma Chan (!!!!) about their new series (yes, this is a ridiculous sentence to say, how cool?!) and naturally we had to discuss the core theme of this series: how fundamental female friendship are in our adult lives.
“I mean romantic love is amazing and wonderful, but really friendships, frankly, they’re often the longer lasting thing in many cases,” Gemma tells me, “I personally wouldn’t have made it this far in life without my friends.”
“There’s a complexity to a female friendship, there’s a sisterhood, there’s a stretching and a pulling,” Jen adds, “and even in this show, I was thinking about - West Duchovny and Harlow Jane - they show you what a young friendship can be and how complicated that can be. Then we are kind of the more mature embodiment of it, but I love that you see the full breadth.”
I’m slightly biased as I just wrote a book about how women are reprioritising platonic love as the true love stories of their lives, over romantic love, but, female friendships are magic. They offer an intimacy, validation and support that is as powerful and loving as any romantic relationship, research even proves that women would rather talk to their friends during difficult times, while men prefer to lean on their spouses. If you’re an Amy Poehler Good Hang stan you’ll know icon Regina Hall mentioned this, and yes, we all have our own Lisa!
Speaking of icons, this series is packed with them. If Jennifer Garner and Gemma Chan weren’t enough for you (they’re already perfection), they’re joined by Regina Hall (Lisa!), D’Arcy Carden and Chloë Sevigny, who round out the group of Hollis’ closest friends.
“I loved that it wasn’t just a story with kind of token supporting roles,” Jen said, “the story is strong enough from Ellen’s book and Becca’s writing to to really gather these powerhouse actresses who each have their own arc, each have their beginning, middle, end, and each have a surprise along the way.”
As much as they both loved the script and the story, it turns out celebrities are just like us. They take jobs based on the lovely people who are doing them too.
“I wanted to work with you,” Gemma says to Jen’s delight, as they hug, “I think I was the second to sign up. I was like, well, I want to work with Jen Garner.” Jen adds: “I kept this up for months. I was just like, it’s me and Gemma.”
Of course, sharing the screen with Jen was part of the fun, the other half was the juicy script that they all had to play with. “We have an amazing showrunner, Becca Brunstetter,” Gemma says, “She’s a playwright as well. She took these brilliant characters from Ellen Hildebrandt’s novel, and she really, you know, brought them, you know, took them even further and developed the dynamics. It’s all there.
I always love to ask actors what advice they’d give to their younger selves, not only as I wrote a whole book about how important staying connected to every version of ourselves is, but also as I love an insight into someone else’s perspective of what they wish they’d known or learnt along the way. We’re all constantly growing, learning and evolving after all, right? And as Jen was a pivotal childhood icon for many of us in 13 Going on 30, how could I not ask?
“It would be anywhere that you have the possibility of learning something, take full advantage,” Jen says, “If you’re in college and there’s a class that you will never care about again, really study it because it’s your only shot at having a brilliant person stand in front of you and teach you what they have to teach you.”
“I would say trust your instincts. Stay curious. Look for the kind people, look for the warm people,” Gemma adds.
Arguably, the most profound advice from the actors came later though, when I asked about which career milestones (if any) they wished they’d commemorated more, as we’re always briefed in junkets not to ask about the actors personal lives (rightly so).
“Oh in careers?” Jen said, “I think about life more than about careers. I mean, yeah, career is happening sometimes in the background. Life is what’s really happening.”
I wasn’t prepared for the direction the conversation took next, but I think it reinforced a lesson I often don’t take heed of as a slight workaholic, who struggles to switch off and can so easily get swept up in working 24/7: there is so much more to life than work.
“I don’t know about commemorating so much as - the only regrets I have are missing key milestones in my loved ones’ lives. Not like those, but like -” Gemma said, as Jen added: “Yeah, like weddings or missing a funeral or missing because we’re at work. And yeah, that is hard. That’s the hard part about our job for sure.”
“It’s just so silly for our silly job to be bigger than people that you love and what their celebrations are. But I think more, our jobs are plenty celebrated. I think that’s to your point we don’t need any more celebration. We’re here. We’re talking to you. Our hair and makeup is done. We’re so lucky. We’re like the luckiest. So it’s really just, you know, when can you wrap your arms around the people that you love, which is kind of what the show’s all about.”
So, take this as your daily reminder that life is short, put your phone down this evening, be present with the people you love and remember a good friend can get you through just about anything. Oh, and in my opinion, a good TV show can too.
The Five Star Weekend is available to stream now on Sky and NOW.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.