Jennifer Garner has found a role that’s closer to her than most, and she’s candidly explained why.
The 54-year-old actress leads new Peacock series The five-star weekend as Hollis Shaw, a celebrity chef navigating life after the sudden death of her husband.
When Hollis’ world begins to fall apart, she gathers her closest friends from different chapters of her life for a weekend at her Nantucket beach house, surrounded by a cast including Chloë Sevigny, Regina Hall, D’Arcy Carden and Gemma Chan.
Garner also serves as an executive producer on the series and her contributions extend far beyond acting.
Showrunner Bekah Brunstetter said PEOPLE that Garner “had some really good ideas” in front of and behind the camera, drawing on his own life experience in a way that shaped the series.
“Jen is in her 50s, Hollis’s age. She has grown children, so she had a lot of very intelligent insight into Caroline’s story,” Brunstetter said, referring to the story involving Hollis’ college-aged daughter, played by Harlow Jane, who is struggling to deal with her grief.
Garner also brought a personal understanding of what it feels like to grow up in a small community and become a household name, something that Hollis experiences on screen and that Garner knows from his own upbringing in West Virginia.
“What effect does fame have on your friendships and on your relationships,” Brunstetter said. “She had a lot of insight there.”
Working with Garner was, according to Brunstetter, a truly simple creative partnership.
“She’s so approachable and so warm, and there’s nothing about her that makes you feel like you can’t touch her. There was a lot of trust there, which is really nice.”
For Garner herself, the project’s appeal was multi-layered.
“There was so much appeal to doing this show for me,” she said PEOPLE. “The idea of not leading a group of women but being part of an ensemble of female actors who all had complex beginnings, middles and ends of plots with so much to feed into between them and complicated, misunderstood backstories.”
Themes of heartbreak, motherhood, fame and romance woven throughout only added to this appeal.
A connection between the actress and the character was particularly simple.
“I would definitely say food is my love language. I share that with Hollis,” Garner said with a laugh, adding, “I think, frankly, she’s a better cook than me, but I learned how to make scallops from her.”
THE Five star weekend is now streaming on Peacock.
