Is The Five Star Weekend Series Different Than the Book? The Show's Creator Explains
"I really love the book, so it was a joy to adapt," Bekah Brunstetter — who also turned The Notebook into a Broadway musical — told Peacock Blog.
Key Takeaways
- Bekah Brunstetter adapted The Five Star Weekend as a largely faithful version of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel while making changes to streamline the story, keep more action on Nantucket, and fit the pacing of an eight-episode series.
- Major adaptation changes include Caroline’s altered storyline, the removal of certain book scenes like sailing on The Endeavor, and how key revelations, including Gigi and Matthew’s affair, are uncovered.
- Brunstetter emphasized giving each character emotional depth onscreen despite the loss of the novel’s shifting internal perspectives, using efficient storytelling techniques shaped by her experience in television, film, and theater.
Warning — spoilers for both Peacock's The Five Star Weekend and Elin Hilderbrand's The Five-Star Weekend novel below!
How to Watch
All eight episodes of The Five Star Weekend will debut Thursday, July 9, only on Peacock.
Bekah Brunstetter knows a thing or two about adaptations. A successful playwright and TV writer whose credits include This Is Us, Brunstetter's also applied her storytelling skills to the hit Broadway musical version of The Notebook, as well as writing for three more book-to-screen projects: The 2020 film version of The Secret, and series Maid and American Gods.
This made Brunstetter the perfect person to develop Elin Hilderbrand's 2023 novel, The Five-Star Weekend, into a Peacock Original. The series creator, showrunner, and executive producer also wrote the premiere episode and co-wrote the last episode. And she's a big fan of the source material.
"I really love the book, so it was a joy to adapt — because it wasn't like, 'hmm, how are we gonna do this?'," Brunstetter told Peacock Blog. "It just felt like I'd been served an abundance of riches."
See the main differences in the book vs the show below. We'll start with one small change: The book title contains a hyphen, where the show's title does not!
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The differences between The Five Star Weekend show and the book it's based on
Brunstetter maintains that Peacock's series is a largely faithful adaptation of Hilderbrand's book.
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Caroline has an affair with her professor in the book
Hollis's daughter's storyline undergoes the most substantive changes. In Hilderbrand's The Five-Star Weekend novel, Caroline is a film student at NYU (in the show, she's pre-med, not going to school in New York, and she's dropped out). On the show, Caroline's taking photos of the women while in the book she's making a documentary. And, Caroline has an affair her older mentor, Isaac, back in New York City.
"We just wanted to keep the story on the island so it felt a little more compact, and there was a little bit more of a pressure cooker," Brunstetter explained.
The women don't sail on The Endeavor
"We had three weeks to shoot on Nantucket, and we had to be very judicious and deliberate with about what we shot there," she said. Among the on-site set pieces they had to cut, for example, they couldn't have the women sail on The Endeavor like they do in a notable book scene. Still, "we were on the beach, we were out to dinner, we were downtown."
Brooke kisses Dru-Ann in the book, not Gigi
The rest of the show's differences from the book are small tweaks to serve the episodic story: In the novel, Brooke kisses Dru-Ann, not Gigi. Also, Tatum has a son named Dylan in the book, while in the series, she has a daughter named Aubrey and Dylan (Henry Eikenberry) is the father her child.
Gigi and Matthew's affair is revealed differently
In the book, Electra reveals to Hollis that she saw Gigi and Mathew together, but she doesn't say it in front of Caroline like in the show. In fact, Hollis decides to never tell Caroline about her father's affair.
In the show, Brooke breaks the news to Tatum and Dru-Ann and they all tell Hollis, and Caroline puts the pieces together separately.
RELATED: Who Is Gigi on The Five Star Weekend & What's Her Secret? About Gemma Chan's Character
How creator Bekah Brunstetter turned The Five Star Weekend into a book
Hilderbrand's book is told in third person that shifts between different characters' POV. Because viewers can't get inside the characters' heads watching a TV show, Brunstetter aimed to give each character, and the performers who play them, "moments of depth" onscreen, while "also making eight episodes that feel very digestible."
"Hollis is the main character, but they all have such rich stories. I wanted to attract really good talent, and I wanted to give them each something to really dig into," Brunstetter told Peacock Blog.
RELATED: The Five Star Weekend Cast Includes Two Comedy Stars
RELATED: An Episode Guide to The Five Star Weekend
When it came crafting eight episodes from of a 51-chapter novel, "a lot of that is just about economy of storytelling," Brunstetter explained, adding that she honed that skill breaking stories in TV writers rooms. That, and "being a playwright forces you to be very malleable, and to be able to rewrite very quickly, think on your feet."
"On my playwright side of life, I do book writing for musicals, and it's similar in the sense that you've got about 30 seconds to tell everything," she continued. "You want to be universal and you wanna be emotional, and you want to be specific—and you want to do all these things in such a short amount of time."
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