'The Five-Star Weekend' book; from left: D’Arcy Carden as Brooke, Regina Hall as Dru-Ann, Chloë Sevigny as Tatum, Jennifer Garner as Hollis and Gemma Chan as Gigi in 'The Five Star Weekend' Peacock series. Little, Brown and Company; Seacia Pavao/Peacock Logo text Some stories refuse to stay on the page. The Hollywood Reporter’s Beyond the Book column explores what happens when books make the leap to screen and beyond — unpacking what stayed, changed, how it was done and why it matters with the creatives who made it.
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[This story contains spoilers from the first season of The Five Star Weekend.]
The Five Star Weekend, both the series and the Nantucket girls trip within the show, begins with a detailed itinerary listing such activities as a pajama dance party, shopping in town and dinner at a fancy restaurant, complete with dress codes. But by the end of the weekend, four of the five friends played by Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny and D’Arcy Carden are wearing pajamas and eating pizza and wine around the kitchen counter after wrestling with their own nuanced personal issues — including ones involving mental health and sexuality.
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The shift in clothing and food — on the first night the well-dressed ladies were eating beautifully plated roasted vegetables and a blackberry galette that Garner’s food influencer Hollis Shaw remade because the original was a little burned — reflects how the first season of the Peacock series, recently renewed for season two, depicted the friends’ weekend-long transition from trying to present perfect, put-together images to embracing their messier emotional realities.
“They stop trying to be perceived in a certain way, and they’re just comfortable,” showrunner Bekah Brunstetter tells The Hollywood Reporter of the friends by the end of season one. “By the end of the weekend, they’re just sort of like laid bare, and they no longer have the energy to try and be funny or try and be smart or try and control how they’re being perceived. They just sort of are being together, and that was very much by design.”
By the end of the weekend the women are more honest with themselves and each other and have more fully embraced who they are and what they want.
Speaking about adapting the Elin Hilderbrand novel for TV, Brunstetter said she was struck by how the book deals with the image vs. reality dynamic and how it seemed universally relevant.
“I think it’s something we can all relate to, especially in a world where we’re taking pictures of everything and presenting our lives in a certain way,” Brunstetter tells THR.
The show also lets Hollis more literally attack her well-constructed reality.
“When I started getting to the end of the book, I just thought: She needs to destroy her kitchen,” Brunstetter says. “In the book she doesn’t really have a true breakdown because, of course, it’s a book, right? We’re in her mind more than we are watching her do things with her body. So I just felt like she needs to destroy this gorgeous, perfect kitchen, and her friends need to clean it up for her.”
The kitchen destruction — involving Garner’s Hollis repeatedly hitting her oven with a broom and shattering multiple jars of marinara sauce — is just one of the ways the show diverges from the book, with the series bringing more nuance to at least two of the characters’ storylines.
Going into season two, the series is also facing the reality of not having a book to guide the story, but Brunstetter isn’t worried.
“Because we don’t have a book, you can feel like, ‘Oh no, we have nothing.’ But to me, we have everything because we have these characters. We have what they’re going through,” she says.
Speaking to THR, Brunstetter shares more of what fans can expect from season two as well as who from the series’ all-star cast could return and in what capacity. And she shares the thinking behind some of the changes from the book in season one.
Congrats on the season two renewal! What was the communication with Peacock like about a season two, and when did you start planning and planting seeds for what that would look like in the show?
When I first came on board and was sent the book and fell in love with it and was breaking out the pilot in the first season and pitching to Peacock to even, you know, get the job, myself and my producers, Ali [Krug] and Sue [Naegle], felt really strongly like there’s multiple seasons here because their stories are just so compelling, and you could focus on a different star every season. Like Jen Garner is always the lead star. She’s the reason that they’re all connected. But you can sort of like pivot a bit to a different star every season, and just find them every summer having a new girls weekend. And to me, their stories are so compelling that I always felt I could watch them for multiple seasons. We’re in this very unique space of TV right now, where we have, for example, Big Little Lies was a limited series that became so beloved that they created more story after the novel that inspired it. So even going into it, of course, only one season was ordered, and we ended the first season with some cliffhanging intentionally. But it also could exist on its own in a satisfying way. So we wanted to execute a really good first season, but we’re also hopeful that exactly what had happened would happen — that people fall in love with the characters and just want to be with them more. So I think I was conveying all of this to Peacock early on, but there’s always a feeling of let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let’s see what happens with this first season and go from there. But to me, in my brain, when we were breaking story in the writers room, I was always protecting the fantasy version of this, where it lived on for multiple seasons.
You mentioned those little cliffhangers at the end like Brooke (Carden) and her relationship with the seasonal site interpreter and Dru-Ann (Hall) wanting to start her own agency and Tatum (Sevigny) dealing with her diagnosis and Hollis and Jack (Timothy Olyphant) and Caroline (Harlow Jane) trying to figure things out. When you were crafting the ending, thinking that you were hopeful for season two but you wanted to have something that could possibly stand on its own, how did those storylines play into that? Were you trying to set up things to explore in future seasons?
Definitely, yeah, yeah, because we were trying to find that balance of having them be satisfying story endings in terms of the arcs that we began for each of the characters, while also leaving a door open for future story, which is kind of hard to do. But, for example, the Tatum story — that’s a change from the book. In the book, Tatum finds out on Monday that that she does not have cancer. The show is so lovely and holds the audience from this tone of warmth, but they’re also dealing with real shit and women have scary biopsies. Some of them get good calls and some of them get bad calls. And we just wanted to make sure that even though the show is lovely and aspirational, it’s also real as well. [That result] was a little more real to us, and it not only ends her season’s story, but it also opens the potential for meeting her again after treatment or during treatment. And our intention is it’s a summer trip every season, so we will be picking up with her a year later, which is an exciting storytelling challenge that you’re bypassing a year of life and picking up with these women who are each a year deeper into their journey: Dru-Ann with her company and Brooke with her marriage and identity and Hollis and Jack.
That’s interesting with the year break, because I wasn’t sure if you were going to pick up right with these threads in season two? But it seems like you’re gonna kind of catch up with all of them down the line?
Yeah, just continue and figure out elegant ways to catch up with everyone, like catch up with what’s been happening in the last year. But you know, change is slow and fast. And you think about these big changes we make in our lives, where you’re starting new careers or leaving marriages or starting new relationships, like it takes a while, right? Like you don’t just wake up and just change. We’re always trying to keep the show grounded. So I think it’s kind of working in our favor that change can be slow, and yet they will still be each in a really dynamic life situation.
Season two, you’re venturing beyond the book. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re going to stay true to the spirit of that world but without that sort of specific roadmap?
Well, I feel like what’s so great is that I’ve been given these amazing characters and their stories. And so we have all of that. Just living with the characters in my head, I just found so many stories that I would want to explore with them and so many places I would want to go with them and so many like new dynamics between them. And to me, those characters are just a gift that keeps on giving. The challenge is finding something as juicy and soapy and wonderful as you invite a friend to your party, and she’s been sleeping with your dead husband. In terms of a dramatic engine, we’ve got some really exciting stuff in store. And I’m really excited about some of our ideas on the table.
You vaguely mentioned the Gigi character, played by Gemma Chan, and I think you said before that it seemed like Gemma probably wouldn’t be part of future trips —
She’ll be a part of it for sure. She’s going to be a presence. She’s just not on the trip with them, right? Because that doesn’t feel real. At the end of the book, it’s the following summer and they’re all flying to Italy together, and Gigi is the pilot. The first season and the book have such beautiful scenes of forgiveness. And Hollis, by this point, when she sees that Gigi is flying the plane, is sort of like “Hey, Gigi! Good for you, Gigi.” And she’s sort of let go of some of the anger. I always love that. I’m interested in having her have a small presence in season two so we can carry through that little thread, just what seeing Gigi does for Hollis and what she makes her learn about her grief and where she’s at in her life. And Gemma’s just wonderful, and we just want her around.
I was sort of curious about that dynamic between Hollis and Gigi because, obviously, Gigi was sleeping with Hollis’ husband (played by Josh Hamilton), and they have an acrimonious end to the weekend: Hollis says never contact me again. But she wants to forgive her. And we see through the flashbacks — obviously Gigi had ulterior motives — but Hollis opened up to Gigi and was talking to her as she was dealing with Matthew’s death. Do you think that there were elements of their friendship that were genuine, and that Gigi sort of helped?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And to me, that’s the story. That’s what really jumped out at me when I read the book, how agonizing and bittersweet their friendship is, once Hollis finds out what’s really going on. If Gigi is malintentioned and insane and a homewrecker, there’s no story, right? What’s worth telling to me is like the agony of, “But I really feel a connection with this woman, and she really helped me through this really difficult time, and now I’m finding out who she really is and what she really did to me.” And there’s this weird part of her that still cares about Gigi, and she’s trying to rectify those two things. This is very much in the book and I just was excited by that by that piece of it. It’s always more interesting to me when when people are feeling multiple things for each other, not just anger, not just love, and that was always very interesting. And I just think it’d be really exciting to find that in season two as well. Hollis, obviously she’s going to be grieving her husband for her entire life. There’s no beginning, middle and end. I read somewhere that there are three phases of grief: the beginning, the middle and the rest of your life. So it’s not, it’s not like season two: I’m fine now. But I do think she made it through that first year and change, like a year and a half, and there’s a feeling of like, “Well, it doesn’t define me anymore, right? It’s just become a part of me. So now what? And who am I now?” And then I think she’s kind of like rebuilding herself piece by piece, figuring out who she is as a mom and who she is as a professional woman, as a woman who makes food, as a brand, all the things. And it’s interesting to me to think about how she feels about Gigi a year later, and how that factors into this new Hollis that has been reshaped by the loss of her husband.
With Dru-Ann and her cancellation and the mental health storyline, I was struck by how it seemed like she was sticking with her approach that Posey (Zoe Renee) didn’t need a mental health break and there was nothing wrong with what she said and her generation was different, but then she breaks down and tells Posey she understands she needed a break and confesses her own past mental health struggles. Why did you decide to pursue that nuanced approach?
Elin [believes that you should] just extend empathy to all characters, regardless of the situation that they’re in. But specifically with Dru, a couple of things: We wanted to more explicitly give her a past struggle with mental health that Posey was sort of triggering in her. With all of us, but Black women in particular, it’s just not OK, especially Dru’s generation, to talk about mental health, and there’s pressure to just be strong and great. And we wanted to bring that to the surface a little more. And I find when I’m now interacting with younger people like Posey, it’s so frustrating. Because in some ways they have no idea what they’re talking about, and then in some ways they know exactly what they’re talking about, and they are smarter than us. And I was excited about toeing that line a bit, where Dru is just trying to do her job and does feel like she’s right, but she’s also learning from Posey, and I just love that this show about women in their 40s and 50s had a story in which, kind of with Caroline (Harlow Jane) and Hollis too, they’re not just writing off this younger generation. They’re frustrated with them, and there’s ways in which they that they feel like these young women need to listen to us and need to learn from us, but they’re also learning from them, which I just think is just the human condition. Younger people need to listen to older people, and older people need to listen to younger people. It’s just how the world works and how we progress as humans. So I just wanted to underline that in some way.
You have a very starry, no pun intended, cast here, who are also busy with other projects. Do you feel confident that they’ll all be returning for a second season?
Yeah, I mean we have [multiple-season] contracts on all of our gals, not including Gemma. We didn’t make a [multiple-season] deal with her just because we were like we don’t know if she would necessarily be hanging with all of them the following summer, but [Jen, D’Arcy, Regina, Chloe] those four. This is our dream to have like five true stars, not like “Oh it’s Jen Garner and that lady I know from that thing.” They’re really all in their own right stars who can and have led their own projects. So the scheduling is a bit of a cluster, and our line producer Mary is a saint and a miracle worker, but yeah, I mean, so far it seems like we’re gonna pull it off again by the grace of God. We’re gonna get it done again.
What about Timothy Olyphant, who is also doing a lot of things right now, promoting both this and Lucky, and he’s got the bleached blond hair for Alien: Earth?
We are definitely going to have him back; that’s the intention. We love him. Audiences love him. Jen loves him, and there’s still so much story there. And, thankfully, he just had the best time on the show. He loved Nantucket. He came out with his wife. He was hanging out and swimming in the ocean and fishing. He just loved being around the show. I loved working with him on his dialogue. He had great ideas. So I think it’s that thing where if you just have a good experience on a project, you feel like “Oh, of course, I want to go do that again.” So we’re we’re feeling good about having him back for sure.
We talked about this a little bit at the beginning, but what do you make of the response to the show and its popularity, specifically about how this is a show about women in their 40s and 50s that deals, with a lot of complexity, about things that they’re going through in life, and still even trying to find themselves. It feels like the kind of thing that might not have been made 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. What do you make as the showrunner of the fact that you gave these women such a full, nuanced portrayal, and people are responding and watching it?
It all comes back to like our producers at Universal and Ali and Sue and our executives at Peacock. They all knew and trusted. There’s an appetite for this. Where is this show? They all sensed it; they all knew it; they saw great potential in the book. This has already been said about the show, and it makes me very proud, just the concept of like we can have a show without a dead body. There’s a time and a place for that kind of storytelling, but we also can have compelling stories that are just about the human condition and the things that affect all of us, like love and loss and grief and friendship. I think the fact that this is specifically about friendship has really made it special because we have a lot of shows about family and romantic relationships. It was at the same time a leap of faith and a no-brainer.
The Five-Star Weekend is available to stream on Peacock.
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