The following story contains spoilers about Season 2, Episode 3 of “The Last Thing He Told Me.”
Rita Wilson stepped into Laura Dave’s “The Last Thing He Told Me” Apple TV adaptation Friday as Jennifer Garner’s estranged mother, Carol.
Much of Hannah Hall (Garner)’s personal life has been kept private, so Wilson’s appearance as her mother with whom she had little to no relationship with provided a new wrinkle into the fabric of who Hannah is.
While on the run, Hannah decides to take Bailey to a place where she believes no one will come looking for her – her mother’s home in Arizona.
“One of the most impactful lines to me when I was reading the script was when Hannah says to Carol, ‘I had to come to a place where I had no discernible connection to,’” Wilson told TheWrap.
“That just, oh my god, that was like a knife just feeling like, ‘Of course, they wouldn’t look for you here.’”
Carol left Hannah at a young age while she and her husband traveled the world selling their art. Later in the episode it is revealed that it was Carol’s photography, not Hannah’s father’s, that made them a living, but it sold for more with her husband’s name attached.
Hannah is slow to let Carol in after decades of estrangement while staying at her remote place. Wilson believed, though, that Carol made attempts to reconcile with Hannah in the past, but they were never met.
“I think that Carol has tried many times over the years to reunite with Hannah and to reestablish, not even reestablish, to establish any kind of relationship with her, so [this reunion] is very, it’s painful,” she said.
“She does have regrets, but she also owns that she made those choices, and she’s not a victim,” Wilson added. “She definitely made the choices and understood too late that those choices were very harmful to her daughter and to herself.”
When Carol attempts to apologize and reconcile her relationship with her daughter, Hannah replies that she’s not ready to forgive. Hannah emotionally admits she spent every day of her childhood waiting for her mom to come home and that she wants to be the kind of person that could get over it but she’s not sure that she can.
Wilson said that the unaccepted apology felt real and authentic for the characters. She appreciated that showrunner Josh Singer and the team did not tie up the mother-daughter story in a bow.
The “Sleepless in Seattle” actress also credited the writing team for building in the tension and history between her and Garner’s character. She joked it’s “almost impossible” to play the deep pain between their characters because of she and Garner’s off-screen chemistry.
“Every time we had a free moment, we were in the corner having tea and laughing and huddling and just being chicks on a set,” she quipped.
The third episode of the season also sees Hannah reunite with her husband and Bailey’s father Owen, who has been on the run for over five years. Though Carol has been out of Hannah’s life for some time, she is still protective of her daughter and can see the pain his disappearance has caused her.
Wilson noted too that Hannah, Bailey and Carol all share that they were raised without their mothers around. This intergenerational trauma bonds them.
“Hannah is an artist, and Carol was also an artist, who never got the recognition because her husband took credit for everything that she did. Bailey lost her mom, and then her dad abandons her in this bizarre way,” she explained. “You have very hurt women, who are in pain, and they have their own spheres of what that is.”
After Bailey’s burner phone call to her boyfriend in Los Angeles, Hannah and Owen discover that the mob family has tracked their location again and is headed to Carol’s home in Arizona. They pick up their stuff and leave Carol behind as they hit the road again.
As for Carol’s future with the series, Wilson told TheWrap she hopes there’s room for reconciliation between Hannah and her mother.
“If there is something where Hannah and Carol have to be together again, and I don’t know what that would be, but I know that there’s really talented writers out there that can come up with all sorts of things,” she said. “But I hope it’s not the end of Carol and Hannah and Bailey reuniting in some ways down the road.”
“It would be so wonderful to see some healing go on there,” she added.
New episodes of “The Last Thing He Told Me” are streaming on Apple TV on Fridays through April 10.
