Jennifer Garner’s emotional audition for a 1990s TV classic: “I needed to hide in the bathroom stall”
Despite an Elektra-shaped setback early in her career, Jennifer Garner has amassed one of the most subtly interesting filmographies of any major star working today.
Prior to her run-in with the sai-swinging superhero, she appeared in a number of classics like Catch Me If You Can and 13 Going on 30. After this career-defining encounter, she bounced back with a number of other hits, including scoring a Sag Award nomination for her role in Dallas Buyers Club.
One of her earliest successes came on the WB teen drama series Felicity, airing in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, which starred Keri Russell as the title character, a college student from California navigating life on a New York campus. Garner played Hannah (which is sometimes spelt ‘Hanna’), the long-distance girlfriend of Noel Crane (Scott Foley), one of Felicity’s earliest romantic interests.
She only appeared in three episodes of the show, but this was enough, as Garner (who is not to be confused with Weapons star Julia Garner, something I do all the time) explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2024, that her audition for the role of Hannah was a very emotional one. She put so much effort into this job that the effects of it lingered long after she left the room.
“[It] must have been the breakup scene,” she recalled, “I remember the audition. I remember going into the bathroom after because the scene was so emotional, and I needed to cry. I needed to hide in the bathroom stall and finish the cry that I started in the audition because it was such a powerful scene.”
The “breakup scene” in question takes place in ‘Thanksgiving’, the ninth episode of the first season, when Hannah comes to visit Noel and hints that she might transfer to his college, much to Felicity’s dismay. However, the two end up breaking up, which leads Noel to run directly into Felicity’s arms, kicking off their own dating storyline.
Even though she was only in a handful of episodes of Felicity, Garner was able to form a vital relationship with the co-creator of the show, JJ Abrams, who, a few years later, created another TV show for ABC, the spy thriller Alias, centring on Sydney Bristow, a CIA agent working as a double agent embedded in a global crime syndicate.
When Abrams was looking for someone to play Bristow, he was undoubtedly reminded of the talented young woman who had guest-starred in his previous show. Garner played Bristow across all five seasons of Alias, earning a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actress – Television Series Drama’ in 2002.
It can sometimes feel like auditions aren’t worth putting that much effort into when there’s no guarantee of a job at the end of it, but luckily, Garner didn’t take this advice. If she had, then she might not have had the dazzling career she enjoys today.
