J.J. Abrams Quipped How ‘Alias’ Would Make Jennifer Garner a Different Wife to Ex-Husband Scott Foley
Jennifer Garner went through a few radical changes when she starred in her hit show Alias. The show’s creator, J.J. Abrams, felt her husband at the time might experience these changes herself firsthand.
Jennifer Garner brought out a a different side of herself in ‘Alias’
Garner was married to Scott Foley back when she did Alias. Showrunner J.J. Abrams already knew the couple well, as he was responsible for bringing them together. Foley starred in the TV drama series Felicity, which Abrams also produced. Garner guest starred in a few episodes of the show, immediately striking a bond with Foley, which later led to their marriage.
Abrams remembered being so impressed by Garner’s performance in Felicity that he wanted to create a role solely for the actor. He confided in an interview with TV Line that he had Garner in mind to play agent Sydney Bristow when writing Alias. Garner was watching the film Traffic in theaters when Abrams told her the news that she’d been hired.
“So I was in the middle of the movie, and my phone started to ring and I dodged outside,” she said. “It was finally, finally mine and I just remember watching the rest of Traffic like it was a romantic comedy. I was kind of levitating above the rest of the seats in the theater. And so freaked out.”
Shooting the pilot was an eye-opening experience for Abrams, who watched Garner morph into an action hero in the show’s first episode. He was so surprised that he quipped Garner would be unrecognizable to Foley.
“She was learning languages, scaling buildings and fighting with muscles I don’t know that she’d ever used before, and she was proud of her bruises,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “And it’s funny because she was married to Scott Foley, who was away doing a movie when we were making it, and by the time we were done, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, Scott’s going to come home to a different spouse.’”
Jennifer Garner thought she’d end up fired on the first episode of ‘Alias’
Garner thought her job might’ve been in jeopardy as soon as she started it. She recalled how Abrams had concerns about her character work as early as the first episode. Soon, Abrams wanted to talk to Garner personally regarding her Alias performance.
“So it was really serious. We had a real conversation where he said, ‘There are times when you really drop into the character, and there are times where…’ basically that I wasn’t hitting it right. I don’t know if he was just trying to just encourage me to take it more seriously. Maybe I was having too much fun. I’m not sure,” she said.
But the conversation worked, and she was able to delve deeper into Sydney Bristow because of it. The adjustments she made to the character allowed Garner to star in Alias for five seasons. Looking back on it, she felt very fortunate to work with a young Abrams, who set an example for her to follow throughout her career.
“Getting to work with J.J. towards the beginning of his career was just a great gift … But he’s not J.J. by accident. He is the most inclusive, team-building, collaborative person… He makes everyone on the set feel absolutely important to the fun of the set, to the fun of the day, to the work at hand. And I’ve really been lucky enough to carry that with me into everything else that I’ve had the privilege to do,” she said.
