Elin Hilderbrand says a friendโs real-life girls trip inspired her bestselling novel โThe Five-Star Weekend,โ which has been turned into a hit Peacock series starring Jennifer Garner.
On July 13, Hilderbrand and Garner stopped by TODAY with Jenna and Sheinelle, where Hilderbrand shared details about a conversation with a friend that gave her the idea for her story.
In the book and the series, Garner plays Hollis Shaw, a popular food influencer who is coping with the sudden death of her heart surgeon husband, Matthew (Josh Hamilton).
Hollis invites several close friends from different eras of her life to her glam Nantucket beach house for a โfive-starโ weekend filled with gourmet food, spa treatments and girl talk among the five women.
The twist? Hollisโ friends โย played by Regina Hall, Chloรซ Sevigny, DโArcy Carden and Gemma Chan โ donโt all necessary get along. The women bond and bicker while each takes pains to keep secrets about their own lives from the rest of the group.
Hilderbrand said she got the idea for the novel after meeting up with a friend who was participating in a similar weekend.
โSo I got a text from a fellow writer in the fall of 2020 asking me to meet for a drink,โ Hilderbrand told Jenna and Sheinelle. โIf you remember, we werenโt really doing that in the fall of 2020. But I met her and we were the only people in the restaurant.โ
During their conversation, Hilderbrand learned her friend was on a โgirlsโ weekend,โ organized by someone whoโd been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The friend explained to Hilderbrand that the woman had invited โall the most important people in her lifeโ to have โone weekend in Nantucket.โ
But Hilderbrandโs friend then confided: โNot all of us are getting along.โ
โOh my goodness, this is a novel,โ she recalled telling her friend.
โWell, itโs a Elin Hilderbrand novel,โ she said her friend joked.
Hilderbrandโs friend forbade her from sharing certain details that might reveal too much about the women on her girlsโ trip.
โWhich I very much respected,โ Hilderbrand said.
โI just created the novel from that interaction,โ she added of the conversation.
Like the showโs premise, the actors of โThe Five Star Weekendโ didnโt know each other before filming. Garner said on TODAY they all met for the first time at the table read.
โYour female friends are everything. Theyโre the breath of life. So to get to focus on that and make these great real friendships. I mean our text chain has been going off for the past year, โThe Five Stars,โโ Garner said.
Working alongside four other lead female actors is what drew Garner to the role, she said.
โ(It) turned out to be better than something I even could have dreamed,โ she said.