There are women who spend their lives taking care of others until the moment comes when they begin to wonder what remains of themselves once they stop. That is the question at the heart of Hollis Shaw, the character Jennifer Garner brings to life in The Five-Star Weekend, a story about female friendship, loss, and how to begin again when life forces you to look inward.
In the series, based on Elin Hilderbrand’s novel, five women shaped by different stages of life escape to the island of Nantucket. What begins as a pause filled with memories gradually becomes a space where they must confront truths that have long been left unresolved.
The actress, who has built a career that moves effortlessly between film and television, also steps into the role of producer to help bring forward a story about women revealing their traumas, vulnerabilities, and contradictions. As in real life, the families portrayed in fiction must find new ways to understand and forgive one another.
Away from the screen, Garner has also built meaningful connections with people who share her commitment to helping others. She maintains a close friendship with the Spanish chef José Andrés, a relationship also strengthened by their shared dedication to humanitarian work. The two have collaborated with World Central Kitchen, particularly supporting communities affected by crises and natural disasters, with Garner joining relief efforts connected to Andrés’ organization. In addition, Garner served as host and interviewer for Andrés’ cookbook launch event for Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard, where they discussed the stories, traditions, and Spanish roots behind the recipes. She is also a great chef and loves Spain and the country’s recipes.
After years of portraying strong female characters, Garner embraces the strength of a woman who accepts her own fragility. In this interview, Jennifer Garner talks about the importance of telling stories about adult women, friendship, learning spanish from her kids and the reality that no one reaches the other side of the journey completely untouched.
Q: You have a very close friendship with chef José Andrés. What have you learned from him over the years?
Jennifer Garner: José is one of the most generous people I know. He has this incredible way of bringing people together through food, and he reminds all of us that cooking is really an act of love and caring for others. He’s also endlessly curious and passionate, and being around him just makes you want to learn more and appreciate every meal a little bit more.
Q: Your favorite book in Spanish is Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by your good friend José Andrés. What makes that book so special to you?
Jennifer Garner: I love it because it’s so much more than a cookbook. It tells the story of Spain through its food, its people and its traditions. Spanish cuisine is one of my favorites, and every time I open the book I discover something new. It’s inspiring, and it makes me want to get into the kitchen.
Q: Does reading recipes in Spanish help you improve your Spanish?
Jennifer Garner: Of course! Cooking is actually a really fun way to practice the language. I try to read recipes in Spanish whenever I can, and if I get stuck, I ask my kids for help because they’re fluent in Spanish. They’re usually happy to translate a word or explain an ingredient, so it’s become something we do together. It’s a nice way to keep learning while making dinner.
Q: Your new series, The Five-Star Weekend, is about friendship, healing and starting over. Did working on the show make you appreciate your own friendships even more?
Jennifer Garner: Absolutely. The show is a reminder that our friends see parts of us that we sometimes can’t see ourselves. Spending so much time with this cast, and telling a story about women supporting each other through difficult moments, made me even more grateful for the people in my own life. Those friendships really do help you through everything.
Q:For, over the past decade, television and audiences have embraced more stories centered on female friendship. Why do you think these stories resonate so strongly today? And what do you think friendship allows storytellers to explore that they cannot with other relationships?
Jennifer Garner: I think these stories resonate because half of the world is made up of women and women are even evolutionarily meant to be, you know, from the beginning we have needed each other. We have been in villages together. We exist of and for and with each other.
Q: What was the biggest challenge in portraying Hollis’s journey without defining her only by grief?
Jennifer Garner: So the biggest challenge was that Hollis is really trying to push through grief. She’s trying to kind of put it on another shelf and not have to deal with it. She’s trying to distract herself to make things beautiful in lieu of feeling what she really needs to feel. And the reality is, grief is gonna sneak up on you. It’s there. It’s right under the surface all the time. And so playing both of those things tonally so that Hollis is almost giddy with leaning into being with her friends, and at the same time, right under the surface, grief is lurking. That was probably the trickiest part for me.
Q: You’ve had a very successful career mixing both movie and TV. What makes TV work so appealing as an actress and a producer?
Jennifer Garner: I really enjoy the ongoing nature of television. Even if it’s eight episodes, just having that time to go more deeply into a character and into their story and what makes them tick. Because you finally know them by the end of a season, and then you are just- you just hope that you get to do it again and start where you left off, before. And in this case, you know, a movie or an episode, it wouldn’t have been enough. This was an experience where very early on, we all kind of melted into each other. There was an instant and very deep ease amongst the five of us, and it really worked to our advantage as we went through this, you know, a long, hard season as these things can be.
Q: What food puts you in a good mood?
Jennifer Garner: Pizza! Pasta! Bagels. Lots of food. Food is so joyful. Ice cream, yeah. We had so many oysters. We really had a food tour of Nantucket.
Q: Had any of you been to Nantucket before being on the show?
Jennifer Garner: I had been there once, on behalf of Save the Children, but I had not looked around the Island at all. And we went back and I was suddenly like, there are so many beaches. I went to the whaling museum. It’s full, just chock-a-block full of amazing lectures and history.
Q: If there is a Season 2, what adventures or life explorations would you like your character to have?
Jennifer Garner: Oh gosh. Hollis is ready to, she’s really in a place where she’s ready to grow. I think she’s had her- she’s had herself reflected back at her from her friends from different decades of her life and she has relaxed into what they see. And I think she’s- she’s really ready to take- take herself on and to see- I mean, I would love to see where her romantic life goes. I’d love- I’m really interested in Hollis as a mom and how she repairs and deepens her relationship with her daughter.
Q: Why do you think it can sometimes be harder to care for others than to really understand our own child?
Jennifer Garner: Oh my gosh. Anais, tell me, please. Yeah, please. Gosh, isn’t that just the truth? Didn’t you just say something so true? That’s part of what’s beautiful about- for us about this piece is that Elin Hilderbrand cuts right to the truth. Bekah picked up on those truths and just honed in and really elevated those, bringing them all to the surface so that we were getting to grapple with some real-life things. And why do we have a harder time communicating with our kids than with people in the grocery store checkout line? I think we all tiptoe around it. I think Hollis’ fatal flaw in this first season is that she’s avoiding conversations that need to be had. She needs to argue with her husband. She needs to have a big, fat fight, like, and it needs to last for a while and they need to separate and they need to battle it out. She needs to take her daughter on. And instead she’s so polite and she’s so removed that she's missing out on the grist and the stuff of life.
Q: I know you are a big fan of cooking. Could you share a recipe for something you’ve been enjoying cooking lately?
Jennifer Garner: My favorite thing to make is you take some, chocolate chips or chocolate, chopped up- chop up your favorite chocolate. So if you really like it bittersweet, then do that. If you like dark with a little bit of milk, you get to play with whatever’s in your chocolate drawer, I have two, and melt them over a double boiler or in the microwave. When they are off the heat, add a couple of tablespoons of solid coconut oil, you know, that’s in a jar, not, you know. Stir it in. And maybe a little splash of vanilla, a little splash of- sprinkle of salt. Let that cool for a second. Scoop yourself a bowl of ice cream, any flavor. You have now made, drizzle it on top. You’ve now made a homemade magic shell. You can thank me later. It is- I can’t- if I have it in the house, I can’t not have a bowl. I can’t not think about it. I have to have it. So that is my favorite easy recipe.
Q: Did you, as a producer, get to choose your co-stars? And how did you prepare the friendship on screen?
Jennifer Garner: You know what’s crazy is that none of us had met. None of us had worked together. I was a fan of each of their work before they were cast, before it was even brought up. The beauty is that Elin, again, Elin and Bekah’s material gave each character a beginning, middle, and end, so everyone had a full arc. And, like Elin's work, sometimes you’ll think, oh, these are archetypes, this is this kind of person, this is this kind of person. But again and again, she surprises you by deepening who these characters are and giving them a real flaw, a real moment of growth, a real change. They become real change agents in their own lives. And that is part of why her- her work is so beautifully adaptable. And Bekah again, caught that, used it to her advantage. Never in my wildest dreams, when I read these, the book and the beautiful scripts, did I imagine that I would be so lucky to end up with working opposite Chloë Sevigny, whom I have circled for 30 years and never met and never thought I would be in the same room as Chloë. Or Gemma Chan, who I, like, revered from Crazy Rich Asians, whose work I just see and think, like, how does she do that? I remember her in Doctor Who. I was like, what? Or D’Arcy, who my kids were just like, oh my gosh, you are gonna work with D’Arcy Carden? Like, the first person they’d been impressed by in a really, really long time. Or our beloved Regina Hall, who, I mean, all of us, one of our best experiences on island was—I said on island, that’s what you say on Nantucket. We all went together to watch One Battle After Another, and we stood up and gave her a standing ovation at the end of the movie. And it brings tears to my eyes because we got to celebrate our girl. And it was frickin’ amazing. It was, like, incredible.
Q: Why do audiences love to watch beautiful people in exquisite settings and fabulous clothes fall apart and then come out the other side?
Jennifer Garner: It’s like the aspiration of what you see. We were all wearing the most gorgeous clothes designed by beloved Susie DeSanto. We were on the most gorgeous sets with our incredible production design, in the most beautiful locations and having this, like, super-elite experience. And at the same time, you’re still human. It’s fun to look at, but we don’t want people to be perfect, because it- what does that say about you? Like, why am I not perfect? None of us are. We’re all kind of a mess. So it’s much more fun to see that and to revel in somebody else’s mess and then the comfort of “But it’s okay.” You can be a mess and get through it, ’cause that’s also the other thing. We all are a mess and we’re constantly getting through whatever we’re messy about. So, I don’t know. I think that’s where the luxury of this show lies.
Q: What do you want to say about betrayal?
Jennifer Garner: You know, I think there’s a reaction to betrayal, right? And that can be whatever it needs to be. It can be as big as you need it to be. It can be small, but there is, every action has an equal reaction, right? And so that’s step one, and that’s gonna show up how it shows up. And then there is over time, and do you soften over time? Do- is there humility from the other side? Is there growth? Is there- do you grow up and over it? Do you- who does it turn you into? And those things, it just takes a long time to answer. You know, in this case, Brooke and Hollis. Brooke feels betrayed. And, you know, everybody feels betrayed by Hollis at some point, except for Gigi. But everybody feels like Hollis has let them down by saying something they weren’t meant to say, by not telling them the full truth about something. And this weekend, because we have eight episodes and it’s perfectly manicured in that way, we do come out on the other side with an argument, a conversation, some living, some- some softening. But there are also bigger betrayals, and what- one of the things I’m interested in about a Season 2 is how is that handled, and where do Hollis and Gigi end up long-term? And is there room? Is there room for them to continue a friendship and a relationship? I believe there is, but I’m also a really big believer in just kind of soaring up and over, a lot of the mess of life in the long run.
Q: Do you think the world needs more stories about forgiving others and forgiving ourselves?
Jennifer Garner: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of these things we’re hoping really are things that the audience connects with. We hope the audience has fun with the visual escapism. We hope the audience has a great time watching women, who are dressed really well and who are of a certain age going at it and- and also melting into and relaxing and having a great time with each other. I mean, shooting the pajama dance party, it was freezing, but it was, like, just a really joyful night as well. So I think we do need that, but always, always, always, if there’s ever a chance to be reminded to give yourself grace and to forgive yourself for some whatever, big or small, yes, there’s never a time we don’t need to be reminded that this too shall pass. Give yourself grace, step out on the right foot, do the best you can in the next moment that you have the opportunity.
Q: Could you imagine living on an island like that?
Jennifer Garner: I could live on Nantucket and I could work at the loom. I could work at the loom and I could be a docent at the whaling museum and I could get very into a very small, focused, lovely life there. Except for the summer. I don’t need that.
