Overview
Spoilers for The Five Star Weekend ahead. Two days into what can only be classified as a disastrous girls weekend, Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) is making pizza. The cooking influencer had only hours before found out that her newly-deceased husband was having an affair for the last 10 months of his life. For the buttoned up mom and homemaker, who has lived most of her 53-years not dealing with things and frosting over them, “sometimes with actual frosting,” she notes, this is life shattering news. She could throw a fit of epic proportions, she could drive her car off a cliff in a rage, she could — like many a disgruntled woman on TV — plot the murder of her husband’s mistress. But instead, she drives to her local high-end grocery store, picks up peaches and heads home to make homemade pizzas for her friends.
It’s a surprising reaction, but also not unexpected. As viewers will have come to see over the eight-episode first season of Peacock’s The Five Star Weekend, this is who Hollis is — or at least who she believes she needs to be.
As the mind behind and face of her viral Instagram cooking account Hungry with Hollis, she’s perfected an image, one that those on the internet have reinforced; projecting their own perceptions on. This experience of holding others’ assumptions of you is something actress Jennifer Garner, who plays Hollis, knows well. The actress has become synonymous with “The Girl Next Door,” for most of her decades-long career, thanks in large part to her relationship and perceived ill-treatment from ex-husband Ben Affleck. But, while playing Hollis was “fun and fulfilling,” for the Alias actress in general, Garner has learnt a lot more about engaging with fans and their expectations.
What makes The Five Star Weekend so unique is the fact that Hollis and co. are working through decidedly less dramatic (some might even say mundane), but relatable crises.
“I feel like Hollis has a very young idea of fame and of being in the public eye,” Garner tells Refinery29. “She’s really looking to it more to satisfy something in her than I think is my natural tendency.”
Unlike Hollis, who’s using social media and her squeaky clean image to combat a lonely marriage and strained relationship with her young adult daughter, Garner doesn’t find a sense of energy or fulfillment via her Instagram comments. “Hollis is new to all it, so she’s really coming at it from maybe more of a place of insecurity, where I come at it from a place of: I’m so lucky to get to do this work,” Garner adds. “And I’m more focused on the people that I’m doing it with and the work itself than I am on whatever anyone is saying.”
This is a lesson Garner knows IRL at 54, and one Hollis will come to learn over the course of her girls weekend. Based on the 2023 book of the same name by author Elin Hilderbrand, The Five Star Weekend follows Hollis, alongside friends Tatum (Chloë Sevigny), Dru-Ann (Regina Hall), Brooke (D’Arcy Carden) and newcomer Gigi (Gemma Chan) as they spend a weekend together at Hollis’s Nantucket home in the wake of her husband’s death. A weekend that was initially meant to help Hollis forget her grief, but becomes transformative for the rest of the group as well, as each woman goes on to face — and learn — a tough lesson about themselves.
“I loved how complex the relationships were and that this wasn’t painting it as a perfect girls weekend or an unbelievably dramatic girls weekend where everybody was at each other’s throats,” says D’Arcy Carden, who plays Brooke. “They go through different phases throughout the weekend of being guarded, letting their guard down, having fun, being accepted, feeling rejected; there’s so many different interesting little juicy details with female friendship that I feel was really fun to explore.”
I loved how complex the relationships were and that this wasn’t painting it as a perfect girls weekend or an unbelievably dramatic girls weekend where everybody was at each other’s throats
The idea of a group of middle-aged (a term we use *very* loosely) women gathering together on-screen isn’t anything new. The past several years has given us series like Big Little Lies, Girls 5Eva and The Morning Show, that delve into the lives of women above the age of 40 and — most often — reveal an interior life that’s lesser than what they wanted or plagued by fears of aging. Sometimes, they’re solving — or in the case of BLL covering up — a murder. But what makes The Five Star Weekend so unique is the fact that Hollis and co. are working through decidedly less dramatic (some might even say mundane), but relatable crises: making a career pivot, exploring your sexuality, and being your authentic self.
For show creator and producer Bekah Bruntsetter, exploring this period of life was a natural fit, as someone who herself is in her mid-40s. “There’s just this general cultural feeling that once you’re in your 40s or 50s, your choices are what they are and you don’t evolve anymore,” Bruntsetter tells Refinery29. “You’re sort of cast aside, you don’t really matter anymore, you’re just raising your kids or doing your job or sort of living your life choices.”
Details
It’s a reality, but one that didn’t necessarily track for Bruntsetter’s own life, as someone who has seen friends and family continue to grow and push themselves into new careers, relationships, and parenting set-ups well into their 40s and 50s. “What I find so inspiring [about] these characters and also women in my own life who are older than me is how life just can continue to evolve if you have the courage to let it evolve,” she says.
Which is where Hollis and friends all find themselves over this weekend in Nantucket. All at a crossroads of sorts and on the precipice of change — even if they didn’t fully know it when they first landed “on island.”
For Hollis, that lesson is in letting go of her need to make those around her, and herself, comfortable, by refusing to engage in tough conversations; for Dru-Ann, a high-powered sports agent being cancelled over comments about mental health, it’s realizing she’s not happy in her role and taking the leap to work for herself; for Hollis’ childhood friend and Nantucket local Tatum, it’s working through a potential scary health diagnosis and learning to let other people in; for Brooke, a wonder mom with a creepy husband, it’s putting herself and her happiness first, and exploring a side of her sexuality she wasn’t previously in touch with; and for Gigi, who reveals herself to be Matthew’s mistress and comes into the weekend grieving and lonely, “I think by the end, through making these connections with these women who she’s come to really care for, I think she’s going on to try and find that in her life…I feel that she may just be starting to be able to figure herself out by the end.” Gemma Chan, who plays Gigi, tells Refinery29.
There’s just this general cultural feeling that once you’re in your 40s or 50s, your choices are what they are and you don’t evolve anymore … You’re sort of cast aside, you don’t really matter anymore.
These are lessons that come with age and time for the women of The Five Star Weekend, but also transcend age — which was the goal for Bruntsetter — who aimed to strike a balance between covering topics pertaining to women in that age demographic while also ensuring they didn’t fall into some of the typical tropes other shows do when exploring this stage of life, which can often position ageing as the cause of or catalyst for these problems — like holding onto a wandering husband as you get older.
“We wanted instead to turn [the trope] on its head a bit and have Tatum still having great sex with her husband who she has been with since she was 16 and give Hollis butterflies over her high school boyfriend even though she’s 53 years old,” Bruntsetter says. Dru-Ann considering a new career, Brooke realizing she’s attracted to women, “these are all things that might happen when you’re a teenager or in your 20s and here they are happening to these women in their 40s and 50s,” Bruntsetter says. “It’s all happening later, but it’s just because life is about change and continuing to change if you let yourself.” — just now, while wearing and discussing estrogen patches (which the women do during a spa day earlier in the trip).
Which is where we find Hollis during that ill-fated pizza party. While the influencer starts off trying to gloss over the upsetting news she’s just had confirmed about her marriage, after a weekend of friends telling her to open up and be real about her feelings — she finally does; brandishing a broom against her stainless steel fridge in anger before smashing jars of homemade pizza sauce on the ground and breaking down in tears. It’s a tough moment for both viewers and Hollis’ friends to watch, but it’s also a cathartic one; the boiling-over point after which Hollis can truly start to grow and let people see the real her behind the internet facade. Which is what, when the weekend comes to end, Hollis begins to do; opening up first to her college-aged daughter Caroline and making the decision to spend time on Nantucket instead of heading back to Boston to dive into her work. It’s a small step forward, but a step all the same; as was Hollis’ reaction after her pizza meltdown, curtailing her need for everything to be perfect and allowing her friends to take care of her and clean up her (still) perfect kitchen. And that’s worth celebrating.
The Five Star Weekend is streaming now on Peacock.
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Originally published at www.refinery29.com.