“The Five Star Weekend” boss on which role was ‘hardest’ to cast — and why

There’s no shortage of big personalities on The Five Star Weekend.

Based on Elin Hilderbrand’s best-selling novel The Five-Star Weekend, the new Peacock series stars Jennifer Garner as Hollis Shaw, a home cook turned food influencer turned Ina Garten-esque TV star and cookbook queen. Looking to a moment of happiness following the death of her husband, Garner’s Hollis invites four friends — each one from a different stage in her life — to a weekend in Nantucket. That group includes Hollis’ childhood best friend, the brassy Tatum (Chloë Sevigny); her college roommate, celebrity sports agent Dru-Ann (Regina Hall); and Gigi (Gemma Chan), a posh pilot whom Hollis met through her blog and has previously only texted with.

Series creator and showrunner Bekah Brunstetter says Garner was her top choice to play Hollis.

“She loves to make food for the people she loves,” Brunstetter tells Entertainment Weekly of her star. “As soon as we started discussing her, I just felt Yes, yes, yes, because, like the book, there’s a levity and a warmth to her, but also a depth.”

As the rest of the cast solidified, one role remained open even just days before production was set to begin last summer.

The “fifth star” — Brooke, the eager-to-please suburban mom whom Hollis bonded with when they were raising their young kids — was especially difficult, because the creative team didn’t want the character “to go broad,” Brunstetter says. “Tonally, it was just the hardest character to cast. And, of course, we went down some roads that weren’t right.”

Thankfully, D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place, Barry) walked through the door.

“There’s just something in her that I recognize and love,” Carden says of Brooke. “I read it and I knew her.”

Adds Brunstetter: “As soon as we met with D’Arcy and she read some scenes, I knew it was the perfect fit — just in the alchemy of the group.”

And there is no foolproof recipe for onscreen chemistry. There could be the perfect measurements of talent and timing and writing and direction, but you never truly know for sure if the material will rise until the camera starts rolling.

Director Minkie Spiro (All Her Fault, 3 Body Problem) decided to accelerate the process by adding a little social baking powder, i.e., hosting a gathering for Garner, Hall, Sevigny, Chan, and Carden shortly before shooting began.

“She had the idea to get us together — and not at a restaurant where we’d eat lunch and be polite and everything, but her house,” Carden says. “She wanted us to eat, and then she wanted us to play Pictionary. And truly not a quick game of Pictionary. I think we played for like two hours. It was really the right move, because it did kind of force us to be in this weird, sort of uncomfortable, vulnerable situation where it wasn’t just the typical, small talk, getting-to-know-you questions.”

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Midlife “is such an interesting age, because there’s so much happening,” Carden adds of the themes central to Five Star Weekend. “In the same friend group, you could have somebody whose kid is going to college and somebody who’s pregnant, and somebody who is in their second marriage and somebody who’s divorced. The stories are endless.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly