🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
The first thing Laura Dave felt was lucky.
The author couldn’t have been more thrilled to have Rita Wilson join Jennifer Garner on Season 2 of the hit Apple TV+ series “The Last Thing He Told Me.”
“I do have to do a shout out to Rita Wilson,” Dave, 48, who wrote the novel that was adapted into the show, gushed exclusively to The Post. “‘Sleepless in Seattle’ is my comfort movie. It’s my favorite. And the fact that she’s out there playing a character that I created, I cannot. I feel so grateful.”
The show follows Hannah (Garner, 53) who “must forge a relationship with her 16-year-old stepdaughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice), to find the truth behind why her husband has mysteriously disappeared,” per the synopsis.
Season 2 picks up after a time jump, when Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) show ups after five years on the run.
Hannah and Bailey now find “themselves in a race to figure out how to reunite their family before the past catches up to them,” per the official logline.
And fans have the thriller’s lead to thank for bringing Wilson, 69, aboard as Hannah’s mother, Carol.
“Jen actually was the one who suggested casting Rita,” the executive producer, and Dave’s husband, Josh Singer, expressed, adding it was an idea that everyone took to “very quickly.”
“Rita is fantastic,” he continued. “In an episode that is really all about past trauma and forgiveness, Rita and Jen and Angourie really works some things out about mothers and daughters which I felt was really great and we couldn’t have done without Rita.”
Singer, 54, noted that Carol “was a character that I always wanted to revisit after last season.”
Judy Greer also joined the second season, which made it a mini “13 Going on 30” reunion.
Garner and Greer, 50, famously starred in the iconic 2004 rom-com together.
“I would say we were very fortunate this year to have some really outstanding people join us. There’s Judy, there’s Luke Kirby, and then Rita Wilson,” Singer told The Post.
“It amazing,” Dave chimed in. “They’re actually amazing together, on and off screen. Jen really thinks of Angourie like a daughter [as well]. On and off screen they love each other the way a mother and daughter do. And it’s incredibly sweet.”
For Garner, playing Hannah has been a role of a lifetime.
Earlier this month, the “Elektra” star revealed that the character “shaped” her.
“She’s strengthened me. She has given me purpose,” she said at a book signing.
Which is every author’s dream to hear.
“In a series of pinch me moments since this journey has begun, getting to watch her be Hannah Hall is top of the list,” Dave reflected to The Post. “Because she has this idea that we often talked about in terms of Hannah being the grown up in the room and the responsibility of that, and she is the grown up in every room she enters and just brings that energy, brings that heroism. And so, the idea that this character has been so important to her is makes me really, really honored and happy.”
Season 2 comes on the heels of Dave’s sequel novel “The First Time I Saw Him,” which was released in January. It’s loosely based on the book, leading Dave to “definitely” feel “an added layer of pressure this time.”
“The reception we received to the first season and before all that, to the first book, I was just so overwhelmingly grateful for it that I wanted to write the next chapter in a way that viewers would feel really excited. That my readers would feel like, ‘Oh my God, this is exactly where I was hoping Hannah would go.’ So [I was relieved] when the first reviews started coming in from readers.”
Season 2 of “The Last Thing He Told Me” is currently streaming on Apple TV+.