Jennifer Garner on why thriller The Last Thing He Told Me is really 'a love story between 2 women'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Jennifer Garner has lost a lot of sleep because of The Last Thing He Told Me.
First, the star would be reading the No. 1 New York Times best-selling novel with her middle child at night before bed, and as fans of the Laura Dave book can relate to, bedtime just kept getting pushed later and later because they couldn't put it down.
When Garner learned that the show was being adapted into an Apple TV+ thriller series, she had to content herself with knowing that the lead role of Hannah had already been cast, with Julia Roberts set to headline the show. "I loved it so much that when I read it, I wanted to go back to bed knowing that there was no way I could play it. It had already been cast," Garner tells EW.
Then, when the role suddenly became available, the star pounced. "I went for it. And I stayed up all night writing letters, like all night, like saw the sunrise, just writing and rewriting letters and sending these letters out. And then the next night, I did it again," she says.
The all-nighter worked. Not only does Garner play Hannah in the series, which premieres Friday, but she also serves as executive producer on the show. Like the book it's based on, the story follows Hannah, a woodturner and happy newlywed who suddenly must forge a relationship with her combative 16-year-old stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) in order to find the truth about why her husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), has mysteriously disappeared.
Saeed Adyani/Apple TV+ Jennifer Garner as Hannah in 'The Last Thing He Told Me'
Initially, all Hannah has to go on are her and Bailey's memories of Owen, and a strange and frustratingly short note that simply reads, "Protect her." What follows is "one twist after another," per Garner, but though the show's bones are that of a thriller, its heart is something else entirely.
"The show is really a love story between two women: A girl who does not know how to have a mother, and a woman who does not know how to be a mother. And they start out in an adversarial role with each other, and their lives are completely blown up in such a way the stakes could not be more high, that they have to start working together as a team, whether they like it or not," explains Garner.
The actress, who has three kids of her own, says that her character also has to bite her tongue a lot, which "feels very much relatable to anyone with teenagers." "Then over time, they start to rely on each other, trust each other, and become a real team," she adds. But, naturally, she says, "the thing that is exciting is that in the middle of all of this, the stakes become more and more life and death. And it just becomes more and more propulsive as it goes on, and there's just one twist after another. So there is a thriller, but it's also very much a family drama."
Now, as the series is set to finally make its debut, Garner is reminiscing about those sleepless nights that got her here. "What Laura [Dave] wrote, you just can't believe how many cliffhangers there are, how many times something huge lands right at the end of a chapter, and you are compelled to keep reading," she says. "And I can only hope that we should be so lucky that people feel that way when they watch."
Aisha Tyler, Augusto Aguilera, Geoff Stults, and John Harlan Kim also star in the series, which is co-created by Dave and Josh Singer (Spotlight). The seven-episode season will premiere globally with the first two episodes on Friday, followed by one new episode weekly through May 19 on Apple TV+.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
