How does ‘Five Star Weekend' relate to Jennifer Garner?

Jennifer Garner has found a role that cuts closer to home than most, and she has been candid about exactly why.

The actress, 54, leads Peacock's new series The Five Star Weekend as Hollis Shaw, a famous chef navigating life after her husband's sudden death. 

When Hollis's world begins to unravel, she gathers her closest friends from different chapters of her life for a weekend at her Nantucket beach house, surrounded by a cast that includes Chloë Sevigny, Regina Hall, D'Arcy Carden and Gemma Chan.

Garner is also an executive producer on the series, and her contributions went well beyond the acting. 

Showrunner Bekah Brunstetter told PEOPLE that Garner "had really great ideas" both in front of and behind the camera, drawing on her own life experience in ways that shaped the show. 

"Jen's in her 50s, the age of Hollis. She has grown children. So she had a lot of really smart insight about the Caroline story," Brunstetter said, referring to the storyline involving Hollis's college-aged daughter, played by Harlow Jane, who struggles to process her grief. 

Garner also brought a personal understanding of what it feels like to grow up in a small community and become a household name, something Hollis experiences onscreen and Garner knows from her own upbringing in West Virginia. 

"What fame does to your friendships and to your relationships," Brunstetter said. "She had a lot of insight there."

Working with Garner was, by Brunstetter's account, a genuinely easy creative partnership. 

"She is so accessible and so warm, and there's nothing about her that makes you feel like you can't touch her. There was a lot of trust there, which is really nice."

For Garner herself, the appeal of the project was multi-layered. 

"There were so many draws to doing this show for me," she told PEOPLE. "The idea of not leading a group of women but of being part of an ensemble of female actresses who all had beginnings, middles and ends to complex storylines with so much grist for the mill between all of them and histories that are complicated and misunderstood." 

The themes of grief, motherhood, fame and romance woven throughout only added to that pull.

One connection between actress and character was particularly straightforward. 

"I would definitely say food is my love language. I do share that with Hollis," Garner said with a laugh, adding: "I think, candidly, she's a better cook than I am, but I did learn how to make scallops from her."

The Five Star Weekend is now streaming on Peacock.