Garner channels mom rage
TORONTO — Jennifer Garner is back in an action hero role, this time with one key difference — a motherly instinct.
In theatres now, Peppermint sees the Houston-born star playing a mother-turned-vigilante folk hero out to get revenge on those responsible for the murder of her husband and only child.
The project comes 12 years after the end of the action series Alias, which earned Garner four Golden Globe nominations for playing a CIA spy, and in that time she’s had three children with her now-ex, actor Ben Affleck.
“I understand what it means to fight for something now in a way that maybe I didn’t when I was 28 and starting Alias,” Garner said in a recent phone interview.
“To me, there’s nothing that raises the stakes more in life than being a mom and there’s nothing that pushes you farther than your kids, their safety, protecting them. That maternal instinct is the strongest thing that women have. So I’ve always looked for the role that would harness that and that would use that.”
Peppermint was written by Chad St. John and directed by Pierre Morel, who helmed the first Taken action thriller starring Liam Neeson as a CIA operative.
Garner’s character, Riley, is wronged not only by the drug cartel that killed her family, but also by a corrupt justice system. Five years later, we find her living out of a van in a neighbourhood where the homeless seek refuge, protecting children and the most vulnerable people in society while fighting miscreants.
Garner said she felt the violence in the film was credible to her character and to the story, noting Riley was pushed “to a place where she has no choice but to fight or to pick up a gun or whatever she has to do to take care of a situation.”
Riley is a character in the vein of John Wick or Jason Bourne, but “based in mom rage,” she said.
“While this is obviously a fantasy and this kind of revenge is nobody’s place in the world — it’s certainly not a template for how anything should happen — but there is something about a woman just taking control and saying: ‘Absolutely not. This is absolutely unacceptable,’ ” Garner said.
“And it is empowering. There was a test screening in Kansas and people stood up and cheered at a certain part of the movie. It tested well between men and women but it was the women who stood up and cheered, and when I heard that I was like: ‘OK, then we did our jobs.’ ”
That sense of women’s empowerment also struck Garner during filming last fall, when a flood of sexual assault allegations hit the screen industry and the #MeToo movement unfolded.
“We shot it as all of that was going down and so the idea behind it preceded the need for women to have their primal roar,” she said.
Asked whether her primal roar came out during filming, Garner said with a laugh: “Clearly. I would say so, yeah.”
Garner trained extensively for the role, to the point where she had a hard time doing simple tasks.
“I would be so beat up by the end of it and my whole body would be shaking so much that I could barely lift my arms to wash my hair,” she said. But it was a welcome outlet. “You forget how good it feels to be physical and to put your whole body into something, and to include emotion in that is incredibly cathartic,” Garner said.
Garner can also be seen in the upcoming HBO comedy series Camping, executive produced by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.
And she’d be open to a reboot of Alias, should one be proposed.
“I heard rumblings of it but certainly no one has ever approached me officially and if they did try to do it and didn’t include me, I would be very mad,” she said. “They would have the wrath.”
Canadian actor Victor Garber starred alongside Garner in Alias and they’re still close, she said, noting she saw him a few weeks ago.
“He is my middle-child’s godfather and it’s one of the things that she would say that defines her, is having her relationship with Victor,” Garner said.
“He is as close to a family member as anyone who I share blood with. So I do keep in touch with him. I stuck with him and he stuck with me.”