Back in the '90s, before she was a movie star, even Jennifer Garner had a side hustle. Garner would babysit for extra cash while she made her dreams of becoming an actor come true.
She popped onto The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to chat about her role in Wakefield, an independent movie about a suburban wife whose husband, played by Bryan Cranston, decides to leave his family by secretly living in the attic of their house. The premise of the film is fascinating enough, but the real treat of the interview was watching them catch up after a few years. It turns out Garner and Colbert know each other: she babysat for his daughter Madeleine.
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The two met while filming an episode of Spin City. As an aspiring actor, she explained to Colbert that she was out of work. It just so happened that Colbert, who was busy with the Daily Show at the time, needed an extra babysitter. She was hired, and Colbert remarked that she was always very reliable. In a story that sounds straight out of the Babysitter's Club, Jennifer tells Colbert "I remember the two of us, like, going into your drawers and trying on your clothes." If only we could be a fly on the wall for that moment.
It's amazing how time has treated these two entertainers. Colbert is now on the Late Show, and she would go on to win a Golden Globe and Emmy for her work in Alias, as well as acting steadily since then.
Wakefield looks like a complicated, painful story that no doubt allowed her to draw upon her recent divorce in crafting her performance. Jennifer also talked about an acting exercise that she and Bryan Cranston did to foster immediate intimacy for a scene, and it involves lots of deadpan foot-touching.
Speaking of the Emmys, Stephen Colbert was announced as this year's Emmys host, which should make for lots of very timely (and political) yuks.
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