Reading isn’t just a source of escapism for Jennifer Morrison. It also informs much of her work, whether acting onscreen in shows like House and Once Upon a Time, or spearheading a project behind the camera as a director and the founder of production company Apartment 3C. “I rely on reading quite a bit for my process,” Morrison tells Observer. “Sometimes it crosses over in a major way, like finding things that I’ve optioned for my company, but when I’m playing a character, I often read memoirs that touch on the kind of life the character might live to sort of build memories and pull ideas.”
Morrison hosts a book club-inspired podcast, The Bookshelf, and her latest credit, directing four episodes of the just-released Peacock series, The Five-Star Weekend, also started with a book.
“I had read the book, and I was totally gripped by the concept of putting together women from different times in your life,” Morrison says of the Elin Hilderbrand novel on which the series is based. Set on the scenic island of Nantucket, The Five-Star Weekend follows food blogger Hollis Shaw (played by Jennifer Garner), as she navigates the sudden loss of her husband by hosting a girls’ weekend with four of her closest friends from different stages in her life: Chloë Sevigny as childhood friend Tatum, Regina Hall as college roommate Dru-Ann, D’Arcy Carden as mom-friend Brooke, and Gemma Chan as new confidant Gigi. “When I heard rumors that there was going to be a show made, I asked my agent to keep an eye on it, and she definitely chased it once it was happening because so many people wanted to be a part of it,” says Morrison.
Scheduling proved to be the most difficult aspect for Morrison, who met for her first table read in Los Angeles less than 24 hours after flying in from Vancouver, where she had just wrapped up directing a season four episode of Yellowjackets. Filming on Nantucket posed another obstacle for the crew, but one that was vital to the story. “It felt like Nantucket was such a character in the book,” says Morrison. “Merri Howard, the line producer, pulled off just incredible stuff to be able to get this production there because not a lot of people have filmed on Nantucket,” she shares, noting that while the interiors were filmed in Los Angeles, the production spent an entire month on Nantucket, where all of the exterior moments were shot.
And yet, for Morrison, the heart of the story came down to the women, and the complexities surrounding their friendships and their individual lives. “Jennifer Garner’s story is the center, but each character has really significant life stuff that’s going on, and that’s true to anyone,” she says. “We have all of these different identities and sort of hats that we get to put on in any given day—to be a mom but to also be a career person; if you are in a relationship, to be a partner—and so it was really interesting to see the alchemy of putting those five friends in this story together and seeing how that brought out different parts of the characters in the same way that it would bring out different parts of us.”
Already in the midst of developing two more novels for the screen, The Underneath by Melanie Finn and I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart (both authors whom she spoke with for The Bookshelf), Morrison shared her essentials with Observer, from the coffee mug she picked up in Nantucket to the four skincare products she never strays from.
Jennifer Morrison’s Essentials
Her self-care routine:
It evolves over the years, and it evolves depending on what I’m working on and what my hours are. I feel like when I’m directing, it’s trickier because the hours in the day are so spread thin. I would love to get to the gym every day because I feel like mentally, that is the best thing for me, but I do really try to stop and make sure that I at least do yoga every day—even if it’s 10 minutes. I have a little app on my phone I can turn on and do before I go to work, or 10 minutes when I get home. Often when I’m directing, I never sit down, so my body just needs it. And then I’m very devoted to my vitamins. I know some people do or don’t believe in supplements; I have no idea if they actually work or not, I just know they seem to work for me. I’ve been trying to get better about having a protein shake in the middle of the day. I wish that I could say that I have a deeper routine than that. I have been using a line of products for my skin called Symbiome that I love. Someone I was at a barbecue with mentioned them to me, and I tried them, and they worked really well for my skin. I use four of their products, that’s it. I just don’t over-product myself. There are so many like, ‘Try this, try this, somebody sent you this,’ but I realized I just need to stick with the one thing that works, and I try not to get off the path. I use The Answer Serum, and then I use their oil, 001—they have a bunch of numbered things—and then I use the lotion and the face wash.
Symbiome.
Symbiome
What she’s binge-watching:
Oh, we just started I Will Find You, with Sam Worthington and Britt Lower. It’s so good! We put that on a couple of nights ago, and I couldn’t turn it off. It actually was making me so awake that now I can’t watch it before bed. It’s really compelling; it almost feels like a modern-day The Fugitive.
Netflix’s ‘I Will Find You.’
David Spowart/Netflix
What she’s reading:
I’m currently reading Tana French’s In the Woods, which I really like. I’m only about 100 pages in, so I’m just starting to kind of get to the meat of things, but it’s really beautifully written. It was recommended to me by Rose McIver, who I worked with for a long time years ago. We bonded over both being readers, so now I always take all of her recommendations.
Her favorite Nantucket spots:
There was a cute little shop, Island Coffee. I sort of found it by default. Because of our filming hours, I always needed to go early, and I think it was open the earliest and it was closest to the port. But they had great coffee, and they had these great mugs—I actually ended up buying one. The mug was the one thing that I bought in Nantucket because it has a socked bottom, so you don’t clank it when you put it down. It sounds like not a big deal, but when you have a sleeping child, you kind of find everything that doesn’t make noise. There was a great little park that was by a beach called Children’s Beach. It wasn’t one of the go-and-lay-out beaches—there were other beaches for that—but it was very cool because it was near one of the big hotels and some restaurants. You could walk along the beach, but you could also see the ferries coming in and going, and you could see all of the boats. There was a little park for kids right there, and there was also a big area where they would put on—we were there a little bit late in the season, so we were past all of the scheduled events and stuff—but they had concerts and little carnival-y kind of things.
Nantucket, MA.
Andrew Wolff/Unsplash
What she’s traveling with:
If I can get away with a carry-on, I love to keep it to a carry-on; I have traveled to Europe for a week in a carry-on just to not have to check a bag. But sometimes it’s just not possible. When I’m going somewhere for work, I have too much stuff; you know, I’ve got to bring my rain gear, and weather things and whatever. I have the Away luggage; I’ve had it forever. Mine is blue, and then my husband had this great idea to put an orange handle on all the luggage, so that we can see it quickly when it comes out. On the plane, I always have a book because you never know if the in-flight entertainment is going to work. It is different now that I have a child because if I’m traveling with my child, there’s no way that I’m looking at a book. I have a little zip-up blanket that I travel with—it’s very tiny, but it makes a big difference. I wear contacts, but I always have my actual glasses in my bag just in case, because I’ve had crazy moments where I’ve lost a contact at the airport.
Away Travel.
Away Travel
