TV Talk: Jennifer Garner returns to TV in ‘Last Thing He Told Me’ adaptation
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Actress Jennifer Garner came to fame on TV — notably in ABC’s “Alias” (2001-06) — and 2023 marks her return to the medium, first on Starz’s “Party Down” revival and now taking the lead in Apple TV+’s “The Last Thing He Told Me,” now streaming.
Based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Laura Dave, Garner stars as Hannah, wife to tech exec Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and stepmom to Owen’s daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice).
They lead an idyllic life on an expensive houseboat in Sausalito, Calif. She’s an artist who still clashes with her disapproving stepdaughter, 14 months into Hannah and Owen’s marriage.
“The Last Thing He Told Me” is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon, who also produced previous Rich People With Problems limited series “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Big Little Lies.”
Hannah’s perfectly manicured life collapses when Owen disappears after the FBI raids his company over an Enron-like fraud. All Owen leaves behind for Hannah is a note: “Protect her,” presumably a reference to Bailey.
During January’s Television Critics Association winter 2023 press tour in Pasadena, Calif., Garner said her character doesn’t know what to make of the situation.
“She doesn’t know why he’s disappeared, where he’s disappeared to, if it’s temporary,” Garner said.
Dave, who co-wrote the first episode with Josh Singer, said she was interested in exploring the mystery of Owen’s disappearance and its impact on Hannah and Bailey.
“Ultimately, the world is going to tell you something about why that person has left versus what you, as the people closest to him, know about him and believe about why he has left,” Dave said. “Living in that paradox is where this mystery is going to unfold and where Hannah and Bailey are going to figure out how they get themselves to a better place with or without him — because they don’t know if he’s ever coming back at the beginning.”
The Enron scandal — the company went bankrupt in 2001 after off-the-books accounting was revealed — gets mentioned in “The Last Thing He Told Me,” and Dave said it inspired the story.
“I watched Linda Lay, Kenneth Lay’s wife, discuss on a morning show that she believed her husband to be innocent,” Dave recalled. “And I thought, well, putting aside whether he is or isn’t (innocent), what about a woman who believes that about her husband, who believes that the world is telling her one thing and yet she knows in her soul who she has married and who she is with. And living inside of that dichotomy, I wanted to create a character who was not in any way a victim of figuring that out, but rather a hero.”
Garner said she is drawn to women who learn their own strength in spite of themselves, and in this story she was especially interested in Hannah “learning that she actually could be and was a mother.”
Garner said Rice’s performance as Bailey, especially in early episodes, put her in a space to feel as Hannah would in that strained stepmother-stepdaughter relationship.
“I don’t know if you made this choice on purpose, to not look at me the first few episodes, but she would not look at me,” Garner said to Rice. “She wouldn’t give me just the dignity of eye contact in the scene. Her disdain for me was so full, and my adoration of her would fill mountaintops — so it was incredibly uncomfortable for me. I couldn’t wait to get to the part that we could just be a team and connect. We were off-screen much more quickly than we were on-screen.”
Executive producer Lauren Neustadter of Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company said the Hannah-Bailey relationship is “ultimately the heartbeat of the piece. I think it’s something audiences will really gravitate toward.”
‘AEW’ in Pittsburgh
TBS’s “AEW: Dynamite” (8 p.m. April 19) will air wrestling live from the University of Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center. “Dynamite” and an upcoming episode of “AEW: All Access” (10 p.m. April 26) will include Punxsutawney native wrestler Britt Baker, a practicing dentist now living in Orlando, Fla.
Kept/canceled
Syfy renewed “The Ark” for a second season.
Roku will bring back Roku’s “Die Hart” for a third season.
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Channel surfing
Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington will star in Netflix’s adaptation of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” which will film in Atlanta rather than Pittsburgh, where it is set. … Pete Davidson will return to “Saturday Night Live” as guest host of the May 6 episode. … Ariana DeBose will return to host the Tony Awards (June 11, CBS). … ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” Disney+’s “Andor,” AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” Apple TV+’s “Pachinko” and FX’s “Reservation Dogs” are among this year’s Peabody Awards nominees.