Jennifer Garner has a very specific wish list for future episodes of her hit show The Last Thing He Told Me: She wants to fight Judy Greer.
“I would like to have a fight with Judy Greer, but a physical fight,” Garner tells Entertainment Weekly of her 13 Going on 30 costar and longtime friend. “I would like to wipe the floor with her.”
As she says this, Garner’s onscreen hubby, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who is sitting next to her in this interview, excitedly exclaims, “Yes! She mentioned that in the other room, and she was like, she’s scared of you.”
“I know, I like that,” Garner replies. “We’ve been friends a long time. I would like to fight her.”
Courtesy of Apple
Garner plays Hannah in the Apple TV thriller, which is based on the Laura Dave novel of the same name, and for season 2, its sequel The First Time I Saw Him. Greer, who plays Quinn, the eldest daughter of the Campano crime family, is one of several new faces to the show this season, which picks up when Owen (Coster-Waldau) shows up after five years on the run, and Hannah and his daughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) find themselves in a race to figure out how to reunite their family before the past catches up to them.
Fans of the books will know that Greer and Garner’s characters are not exactly friendly, which could set the stage for Garner getting her onscreen wish. There’s one major obstacle with Garner’s plan to get physical, however.
“She’s like, I would call my stunt double right away. I wouldn’t even let you do it once,” Garner says of Greer, pausing to assure everyone, “Aww, no, she’d be okay. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
Columbia/ Everett
Jokes aside, Garner has nothing but fond memories of getting to once more reunite on screen with Greer. “It was a real joy,” she says. “I mean, it was hard to do, but a real joy. And I got to watch Judy and Angourie [together], which was incredible, and Judy and Luke [Kirby, who plays Quinn’s brother, Teddy], I mean those two together. He’s so good. They’re so good.”
Her mind still apparently on fighting, Garner concludes: “I think that Owen and Hannah should go into battle with their swords. On horseback.”
Whether or not they get to battle, one thing is for sure: everyone has Garner to thank for getting Greer on the show in the first place.
“I will say that for us, when we were originally writing Quinn, Aaron [Zelman, co-showrunner] and I had a different actor in mind who Aaron had worked with,” co-showrunner and co-creator Josh Singer tells EW. “And when the pages came out, Jen [Garner] came to us, and said, ‘Well, what about Judy for this role?'”
Singer says he was amused by the suggestion at first, because he had previously known Greer for her comedic roles, but when he watched some of her more dramatic turns, he says, “I was really knocked out. And I thought like, oh, wow.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
He continues, “And Jen very much said, ‘I really think she would do something special.’ And from the very first scene she shot, I think we were all knocked out with how good she is and what she was bringing to that role. And so it very much made us want to write into that. I mean, Judy’s incredible.”
The eight-episode second season of The Last Thing He Told Me will debut globally on Apple TV with the first episode on Friday, followed by one episode weekly on Fridays until April 10.