Who Is Gigi on The Five Star Weekend & What's Her Secret? About Gemma Chan's Character
Is Hollis Shaw's fan-turned-friend flawed but ultimately well-meaning, or is she the actual villain of the show?
Key Takeaways
- Gemma Chan plays Gigi Ling, a mysterious airline pilot invited to Hollis Shaw’s Nantucket gathering after the two bonded online following Hollis’s husband Matthew’s death.
- Gigi’s hidden secret is that she was having an affair with Matthew before his fatal accident, making her grief deeply intertwined with Hollis’s while she conceals the truth from the group.
- Gigi comes to Nantucket driven by guilt, a desire for forgiveness, and emotional attachment to both Matthew and Hollis, as viewers wonder if Hollis will find out the truth about Gigi.
Within the first ten minutes of Peacock's The Five Star Weekend — soon after we see Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) learn that her husband Matthew (Josh Hamilton) has died in a car accident, and subsequently burst into tears on TODAY — we met her friends. There's her childhood "sister" Tatum (Chloë Sevigny), college bestie Dru-Ann (Regina Hall), and a friend she met through her daughter's school, Brooke (D'Arcy Carden). And then there's the mysterious wild card: Gigi (Gemma Chan), an airline pilot who Hollis has never met in person.
How to Watch
All eight episodes of The Five Star Weekend will debut Thursday, July 9, only on Peacock.
Tatum, Dru-Ann, and Brooke have questions from the moment Gigi arrives at Hollis's stunning Nantucket home. Why invite a veritable stranger? How, and when, did the two of them get so close?
Fortunately, series creator Bekah Brunstetter doesn't delay a big reveal: We learn Gigi's real connection to Hollis at the end of Episode 1, "Friday: Arrivals." Below, learn more about who plays Gigi Ling on The Five Star Weekend, what the character's secret is, and how those around Gigi (including her best friend) feel about her choices.
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WARNING: Spoilers for Peacock's The Five Star Weekend series below!
Who is Gemma Chan?
Gemma Chan plays Gigi Ling on the Peacock series.
Chan is a British actress known for playing Astrid in Crazy Rich Asians, and roles in films like The Creator, Eternals, Don't Worry Darling, and Josephine, and the TV series Humans.
Learn more about Chan's TV and movie roles, plus the rest of The Five Star Weekend cast, here.
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Why did Hollis invite Gigi as the fifth star of her weekend?
Because, as Hollis tells her friends, "it was easier to talk to a stranger" after her husband Matthew's death. She explained to her wary pals that she and Gigi "just connected," and "she reached out to me."
This echoes what Hollis told her manager about not being ready to "be around people that I know" when she was first thinking about a weekend gathering. In addition to Gigi being a safe space for Hollis to air her grief (though under what's revealed as dishonest circumstances), this also connects to a major theme in the series around Hollis aiming to appear perfectly put-together — even when those she's close to want her to drop the act.
Meanwhile, Hollis believes that Gigi is simply a caring fan who reached out in her Instagram DMs to support her during a terrible time.
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Hollis Shaw's husband Matthew was having an affair with Gigi
Toward the end of Episode 1, Hollis is reliving the trauma of receiving the news about Matthew when Gigi finds her and gives her a hug. "Matthew and I...we weren't in a great place. All I can think about is how we left things," Hollis confides to Gigi.
After comforting Hollis, Gigi excuses herself, looking emotional as she walks down a hallway full of framed family photos. She sits on the floor of her host's gorgeously-appointed guest room to replay a shocking voicemail. "Hi my love, it's me, Matthew. You're probably already at the hotel. I'm heading to the airport," it says — revealing that Hollis's Matthew was having an affair with Gigi. Both she and Hollis are grieving the same man.
No wonder Hollis's dog instinctively growled at her.
In Episode 2, we see a flashback of Gigi and Matthew meeting at an airport bar, and subsequently sleeping together at the hotel they're both staying at. As Gigi is remembering all of this, she is rifling through the office in Hollis's house and stealing a photo of Matthew from a frame. Director Minkie Spiro nimbly turns what could be material for a scary Lifetime movie into a layered character study.
Brooke discovers the truth in Episode 4, after she picks up Gigi's dropped phone and sees an iPhone memory of her and Matthew on a trip (sloppy move, Gigi!). Tatum and Dru-Ann get drawn into her tangled web from there.
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Why did Gigi come to Nantucket?
According to what she says, it's a mixture of guilt and a need to be forgiven by a woman she's come to genuinely like. In Episode 5, "Saturday Night: Nice Dinner Out," Gigi admits to her coworker and friend, Jean Mark (Tory Devon Smith) — who has repeatedly told Gigi she could be "ruining this woman's life" — that she tried to tell Hollis the truth, but couldn't.
"I hope one day you can forgive me," Gigi writes in a confessional letter penned in the very journal Hollis personalized for her.
Jean Mark gently gives Gigi some cold, hard truth. "What you want is impossible. You want to free yourself of this lie so you can feel better about yourself. You're not a bad person Gigi, but you did do a bad thing. And you have to live with that. You will never be actual friends with this woman."
In episode 6, Brooke tells Tatum and Dru-Ann about discovering Gigi's secret affair with Hollis's husband. When Dru-Ann asks Gigi why she even came to Nantucket (valid!), Gigi said, "Because this is what I do. I love people I can't have." It's clear she means both Matthew and Hollis.
Does Hollis find out about Gigi and Matthew?
In a word, yes. And there's still one more surprise to be revealed, too.
To see what plays out when Hollis finally learns the truth, be sure to watch The Five Star Weekend Episode 7 and Episode 8 on Peacock.
