Jennifer Garner On ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’: “I Didn’t Think I Could Survive If Somebody Else Played The Role”; Author Laura Dave Hints Season 2 – Contenders TV
Jennifer Garner has a complaint about Hannah’s husband in new Apple TV+ limited series, The Last Thing He Told Me.
The show follows the story of Hannah (Garner) and her husband Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who mysteriously disappears. But before he left he managed to smuggle a note to her, which said just two words: ‘protect her’, referring to his teenage daughter.
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“There’s not time for ‘XOXO love you honey, so sorry’?'” she jokingly demanded of Coster-Waldau. “It’s just ‘protect her’, period?”
“You have a point,” Coster-Waldau replied, dryly.
Garner and Coster-Waldeu were speaking on a panel at Deadline’s The Night Before Contenders event on Friday at the DGA theater in LA. With them on the panel from The Last Thing He Told Me was Aisha Tyler, who plays Hannah’s lawyer best friend Jules; Hello Sunshine’s president of film and television and executive producer, Lauren Neudstadter, and co-creators and executive producers Laura Dave and Josh Singer.
In the series, Hannah tries to shield Owen’s 16-year-old daughter Bailey, played by Angourie Rice (Mare of Easttown), from an FBI investigation surrounding her father. But all is very much not what it seems—Owen has been keeping some very big secrets.
Garner said she had originally read Dave’s book aloud to her teenage child and they had both loved it so much she knew she needed to play the role of Hannah. So much so, that she wrote to Dave, who authored the original novel, which had been optioned early on by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.
“I just connected so much with Hannah. I loved the book so, so much,” she said. “When the role became available I did just go on a little bit of a letter writing campaign and I just talked basically about why I connected the way I did and I didn’t know if I could survive if somebody else played the role.”
Co-creator and EP Singer (Spotlight, The Post) who is married to Dave, said the process of adapting the novel was a great collaboration, not only between them as a duo, but also with Neustadter and Hello Sunshine. “We were very much aligned, and they were wonderful partners,” he said.
Aisha Tyler commented on the experience of working with a female-centric crew, including an all-female directing team comprised of Lila Neugebauer (Causeway), Olivia Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing), and Deniz Gamze Ergüven (The Handmaid’s Tale).
“There were just so many women behind the scenes,” she said, explaining that the friendship between Jules and Hannah felt authentically represented as a result. “If you’ve been friends with someone since you were teenagers, it’s a familial friendship… I knew who Jules was because I have friends like her.”
Dave also hinted that she might be working on continuing the story of Hannah and her family. Especially given that this first season ends on something of a cliffhanger.
“Now whenever I’m writing I see Jen’s face, which is a very nice face to see, but it makes me feel like Hannah’s story is not done,” she said.
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