Did Jennifer Garner dole out praises for Reese Witherspoon? (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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The Alias star didn’t just sing Reese Witherspoon’s praises — she credited her for inspiring a major career shift. While promoting The Last Thing He Told Me, her new Apple TV+ thriller, Garner revealed that Witherspoon pushed her into producing. “Honestly, Reese is behind that, she has really pushed me. She said to me a few years ago, ‘Nobody is sitting around thinking, what can I shoot in L.A. that’s going to have a 50-year-old woman in it? You’ve got to create your own stuff.’”
Witherspoon wasn’t just giving advice. She led by example, turning her Legally Blonde charm into a Hollywood empire with Hello Sunshine. That same production company backed The Last Thing He Told Me, and Jennifer Garner landed her first executive producer credit alongside her longtime friend.
Garner went all in for The Last Thing He Told Me, pitching herself for Hannah after Julia Roberts dropped out. “Hannah and I are quite different, but there was something about her that just really spoke to me,” she alluded.
The series, based on Laura Dave’s 2021 novel, was a deep dive into female resilience. Garner connected with Hannah’s evolving relationship with her stepdaughter. She explained: “When you are a parent, you still have to fall in love with your kids over and over again. They keep changing, they shift, and you just find new ways to love them.”
With Game of Thrones alum Nikolaj Coster-Waldau playing the missing husband, the story played with memory and perception. His character mostly appeared in flashbacks, and as Coster-Waldau admitted, he hadn’t even seen the final digitally de-aged version of himself yet. “It’s going to be weird.”
Beyond the storyline, The Last Thing He Told Me stood out for its all-female directing team—another detail Garner championed. “This is just a story about a woman learning to trust her own instinct, a woman finding her own agency and struggling through to prove herself to herself. And nobody can tell that story better than women in Hollywood.”
Witherspoon’s influence didn’t just help Garner step behind the camera. It reshaped how Hollywood sees women in their forties and beyond. Thanks to that push, Garner wasn’t waiting for roles; she was making them happen.
