Garner loves camping, and being hated in ‘Camping’
For two people making a show called “Camping,” Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner sure hate the outdoors.
“It was not well thought out,” deadpans Konner, returning to HBO after the pair co-created “Girls.” “We loved writing the show, and then we were like, ‘Oh, this really means we need to be in the dirt all day, every day.’ ”
Their aversion to nature was particularly amusing to series star Jennifer Garner, who “didn’t realize how outdoorsy I was until I was (on set) with Jenni and Lena, who felt punished every day we had to be outside,” she recalls. Co-star David Tennant and Garner “thought it was the biggest gift. Every day, all we could do was be like, ‘Look at that oak tree! Look at that sunrise!’ ”
If only Garner’s “Camping” character shared her serene outlook. In the acerbic new comedy (Sunday, 10 EDT/PDT), the “Alias” actress makes her smallscreen comeback as Kathryn McSorleyJodell, a high-strung mom who invites her friends on a camping trip to celebrate her husband Walt’s (Tennant) birthday.
Equipped with binders of meticulously organized activity schedules, Kathryn imperiously attempts a picture-perfect getaway but instead makes her young son (Duncan Joiner) and fellow couples miserable. Among them: a sex-crazed reiki healer (Juliette Lewis), an oafish recovering addict (Joe Sullivan, “This Is Us”) and Kathryn’s dim younger sister (Ione Skye), who drink and have sex in irreverent rebellion.
“Camping” is based on a 2016 British series, which also revolved around unpleasant people working through relationship issues in the claustrophobic setting of a camping trip. It’s a natural follow-up to “Girls,” which ended its sixseason run last year, in that both mine toxic female friendships for uncomfortable laughs.
Through Kathryn and her estranged best friend Nina-Joy (Janicza Bravo), “we hoped to explore how women can be really cruel to each other, even though we believe deeply in female friendships being the core of our lives,” Konner says. “One of the central questions of this is, ‘What happens when you get a group of people together and you can’t just walk away from the friend who is annoying you and not call them for three days?’ “
After the first four of the season’s eight episodes were made available to critics, some were put off by Kathryn, calling her “tyrannically attentive,” “irritating” and “insufferable.”
Garner agrees with those adjectives but assures “you’ll understand her, even if you don’t love her” by season’s end. Reading the scripts, “I could see where the old Kathryn had been covered up by years and years of insecurity and see what her relationship with her husband used to be,” she says.
One of the chief roadblocks in their marriage is Kathryn’s ongoing struggle with chronic pain, which led to multiple surgeries, including a hysterectomy. It’s a common thread between the character and Dunham, who opened up about her own hysterectomy earlier this year and was forced to pull out of promoting “Camping” this week due to her continued battle with endometriosis.
Dunham “is so brave and articulate about what her body has put her through and talked to me about it,” Garner says. “When you suffer from chronic pain – and I don’t, thank God, I’m only speaking from having read and spoken to a bunch of people who have – you don’t feel good, but nobody can see it, so people expect you to feel fine and perform anyway.
“Poor Kathryn is just exhausted,” she continues. “She’s exhausted from being expected to be something she can’t be anymore and hasn’t been able to be for a long time.”
Although she has played type-A characters in “Juno,” “Butter” and now “Camping,” Garner insists she is not so fastidious, despite trying to “plan my nuts off ” every family vacation. The famously private star enjoys camping with her three kids.
“We have a pole broken in our tent – a very important pole that we’ve put back together with duct tape – but I think we need to get that replaced before we can pull it back out,” Garner says of the family’s wilderness digs. “But yes, we will be camping again soon.”