Minkie Spiro on Directing “The Five Star Weekend”: Bringing Elin Hildebrand’s Bestselling Novel to the Screen

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The Five Star Weekend tells the story of a weekend getaway at a luxurious home in Nantucket that brings together five women friends — each harboring secrets, regrets, and unspoken tensions.

As the weekend unfolds, the bonds of friendship are tested, old wounds resurface, and unexpected revelations threaten to upend their lives. Based on Elin Hildebrand’s bestselling novel, the series captures the author’s signature blend of beach-town charm, complicated relationships, and infectious drama.

Emmy-nominated screenwriter, playwright, and producer Bekah Brunstetter (This Is Us, Sirens, Maid) is the showrunner of the series. It stars Jennifer Garner as Hollis “Hungry With Hollis” Shaw, a renowned chef and food influencer who is grieving the loss of her husband, D’Arcy Carden as Brooke Kirtley, Hollis’ motherhood best friend, Gemma Chan as Gigi Ling, a social media follower of Hollis’ and a commercial airline pilot, and Regina Hall as Dru-Ann Jones, Hollis’ college best friend and a sports agent Chloë Sevigny.

In this interview, acclaimed director/ executive producer Minkie Spiro (All Her Fault) reveals how she translated Hildebrand’s intricate narrative to the screen, developed the characters’ arcs, and navigated the challenge of bringing one of the most anticipated literary adaptations to life.

How Did The Five Star Weekend series come together?

Oh, it’s the long haul. You’re in it for the long game.

Every project is different as far as my involvement goes. On this occasion, I came on board when the book had been optioned and they had just started to break the story down and written the pilot.

I read the pilot and met with Bekah Brunstetter, the showrunner, and executive producers Sue Naegle and Ali Krug to talk about whether or not we’re on the same page in terms of where this show was hoping to get to. It was important that the show wasn’t going to shy away from being able to ask difficult questions and get the actors to dig deep and get dirty with their emotion.

I realized we were all aligned. It felt like this was a great opportunity to tell a story or investigate a world which doesn’t really have a place at the moment, content-wise, on television.

It was exciting to me to make a show about women, friendship, grief, love, and everything in between.

Minkie Spiro

Hollis is a food influencer. Describe the role of food in shaping her character.

For Hollis as a character, food was her safe space. When she was having difficult times with her husband, she was in the kitchen and she was cooking. She calls it her happy place. And it’s where she can switch off and just be and feel content.

Describe layering and texturing the friendship dynamics.

Any book to screen adaptation is a challenge because what works on the page and the imagination that goes with that for the reader, is different from what happens when you’re watching something unfold on the screen. When you’re passing the story out over eight episodes, it’s altogether a different beast.

What was important was to make sure that structurally, each episode had its own engine, but allowed some propulsion to get you to the next one. And often that lay with different characters, depending on where we’re at with the story.

Initially, I thought it was going to always be Hollis’ character, but it wasn’t in the end.

Something that I was looking at at script with Bekah, is how we continue the propulsion, the engine, while still being able to hold space for great character interrogation.

Discuss the ensemble being comprised of friends from different stages of Hollis’ life.

It’s interesting if we all look back at our lives, the kind of friends we had when we were in our young adult life and in our late teens, versus the friendships we have now through work, are very different. That’s what I loved about this premise, that you had these characters that in a way reflect how Hollis’ character evolved over time.

How she sometimes reinvented herself at college or found a different color to her personality that she wanted to massage or spend more time in. And what was kind of fun on top of that, was they were all, in a sense, vying for undivided attention to still be her BFF. For example, Hollis’ friend from high school had issue with her friend from college.

I think deep down, it wasn’t about the shoes at the wedding. It was about both of them being jealous of the other. And so, all those fascinating universal themes were able to be explored through humor and pain within the framework of The Five Star Weekend.

Is there a key theme or theme cluster that served as the North Star for the series?

That’s such an interesting question, because I think depending on where we were at in the story, it was actually different.

I would say what began as something that was focused on grief became about friendship and then became about reinvention, or the strength to be whoever I am right now and not worry about who I need to be, who I should be, but who am I.

I think maybe that’s the North Star: “Who am I?”

How did you balance giving five main characters sufficient screen time to develop them?

Each character needed their own stuff going on. You can be really economical and still get across where somebody’s at. So, for example, let’s say we were doing Never Have I Ever, which was a game they played in Episode Two.

A reaction shot, let’s say for argument’s sake, from Tatum during another person’s dialogue and scene moment, speaks volumes about where their head’s at. She didn’t have to say anything.

I just needed to make sure that I had enough real estate to get a reaction shot from Tatum’s character that was very clearly somebody who wasn’t in the game, who was thinking about something else. That’s paid off in a scene later or, five minutes later. It’s learning and your craft to know what that reaction shot needs to be.

It doesn’t have to be dialogue that can help keep every single one of our stars in the game without having to take up too much air time. It’s very difficult to shoot ensemble pieces because you’ve got to get all the coverage and their little moments, but you’re still only given X amount of days to shoot a show. So it’s a two-handed pushback.

It’s also about learning how to block a scene that enables you to see what somebody else is doing in the back of shot that supports their journey while you’re still focusing on the person in the foreground.

There’s all sorts of ways in which you can allow all five characters to keep their engines stoked while somebody else is centre frame.

Is there a special quality that you personally bring to the story?

Yes. I think there are a couple of things. I think the way I frame things, how I cinematically capture a scene is very Minkie.

I’m always looking to make something have scope and scale. Even a show like The Five Star Weekend, which could feel very domestic and internal, I made sure that we had scenes outside or made sure that there was enough of Nantucket as a character to help world build and give context to the story.

I think the other thing is Minkie humor. There’s a great moment at the end of a very charged scene where Brooke’s character is confronting Charlie and saying, “Get out.” And all her friends, all the stars are on the porch with her.

It’s those little buttons that I think are very me. There’s a humor to it, but pathos underneath it. That’s kind of a Minkie thing. Like a barbed humour.

Can you point to a particular moment in the series that captures the spirit of The Five Star Weekend?

I think there are so many, but I think there is something really beautiful at the end of Episode Six. There’s something very quiet and still when the truth is revealed. It’s so restrained and so elegant, but shows the gamut of emotions of the show.

I think there’s a lot of fun in the tennis match scene in Episode Five, which sums up the show, which is a lot of humor. There’s physical humor when they’re playing a tennis match and Tatum’s saying, “Love forty.” She’s clocking the score while Gigi’s being pummeled by them verbally.