Gemma Chan on ‘The Five Star Weekend,’ ‘Josephine’ and Finding Complex Roles

“I was actually just messaging with my best friend from my uni days last night,” Gemma Chan says over a video call from her London home. “She lives in Germany, so I don’t get to see her as much as I would like. We have to really plan our time to visit each other. Life just gets busy and time goes by. But the best friendships are those ones where you can pick up where you left off and just give yourself, give them a bit of grace and whatever’s happened, just pick up.”

She’s examining her own connection to her new show “The Five Star Weekend,” which premiered on July 9 and has since become Peacock’s top scripted series of all time, boasting over 1 billion viewing minutes. 

The show is based on the book by bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand and stars Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny, D’Arcy Carden and Chan as a group of women who gather at their friend Hollis’ Nantucket home following the death of her husband. Over the course of the weekend, secrets are revealed, including that Chan’s character Gigi had been having an affair with Hollis’ husband Matthew. 

“What really interested me was the fact that Gigi is not a stereotypical other woman as it were,” Chan says. “I think in another show she could have been villainized or been a kind of reductive character. And I know that for Bekah [Brunstetter, the showrunner] for Elin who wrote the book, they both really wanted Gigi to just be a fully rounded but flawed human being. She’s made mistakes and there are consequences to those mistakes, but she’s just trying her best. She’s trying to right the wrongs and she also really grows to care for Hollis and Hollis’ friends and I think really yearns for that connection with them. And that is all really genuine.”

Chan was the second person to sign onto the project after Garner, who plays Hollis. She was familiar with Brunstetter’s work as a playwright, having done a rehearsed reading of one of her plays back in London in the early 2010s. 

“So I knew her work and I just thought, ‘Oh, I know she’s a really good writer,’” Chan says.”You have these five women and they all have such interesting arcs. And how could I turn down the chance to work with such an amazing group of women? Jennifer Garner, I’ve admired her for such a long time and yeah, dream come true getting to work with her and the rest of the women.”

The London-born actress, 43, is best known for portraying Astrid Leong in the 2018 sensation “Crazy Rich Asians,” a role that catapulted her to fame nearly overnight. Since then she’s joined the Marvel world, starred in indie dramas and Disney animations, and is in the midst of a major year with both “The Five Star Weekend” and the movie “Josephine,” which won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award Dramatic at Sundance earlier this year. The film and Chan’s performance are both garnering awards-season buzz. 

“Josephine” explores the aftermath of a young child witnessing a violent crime; Chan plays her mother, with Channing Tatum as the father. The project has been part of Chan’s life since 2019, when she first received the script. 

“It’s been a winding road with this film. I would say it’s really a small miracle that this film ever got made,” Chan says. 

When she first met the director, Beth de Araújo, her instincts immediately told her she was a “real one.” 

“She’s so talented and the script felt so truthful. Every page, the truth was shining through. And I just thought what she wanted to do was so brave and had never been done before,” Chan says. 

Then came the pandemic, the writers and actors strikes and finally, in 2024, the film was made. Chan finally experienced it with an audience at Sundance in January. 

“I couldn’t have imagined the reaction that it got and the way people were moved by it and the way they responded to the film,” she says. “I couldn’t believe actually how many people found bits funny and were laughing and gasping and literally on the edge of their seats. It was a really amazing moving experience for me. I was so happy and so relieved for Beth that the film was out there finally as well. People were watching it and they understood what she was trying to do for the most part. And for it to be well received was just the icing.”

In Claire, her character, she saw herself, her friends, her sister and even her mother. 

“It just felt like it was a very personal project for Beth and very personal for me. And I know for Channing as well — he has a young daughter,” Chan says. “I think that was part of the reason he was drawn to this project.”

Part of the project staying personal meant that de Araújo wanted Claire to dance, as the character was based on her own mother who was a dancer. 

“Beth was like, ‘I really want your character to dance in this film. It’s a really important emotional beat in the film.’ And I was like, ‘Seriously? I’m in a film with Magic Mike and you want me to dance?’” Chan says.  

Chan has just finished work on “Hello & Paris,” a romantic comedy costarring Javier Bardem and Kate Hudson, which she likens to a Nora Ephron movie. She’s desperate to squeeze in a holiday with some friends and family before the fall arrives and festival season begins. 

“I’m really kind of waiting for those roles that I feel I can really connect to and that hopefully is something that I haven’t done before,” she says. “Sometimes it involves waiting for a little bit because for example, like ‘Josephine,’ I feel like I’ve been waiting for a long time for a role like that and a project like that with the right director. So I would be so lucky if I got to do that kind of, another role like that again. Hopefully I’ll know when I read it.”