The assignment was a daunting one: Make a TV special that presents five short dramas about breast cancer and isn’t a total downer. Jennifer Aniston couldn’t resist the challenge.
The 42-year-old actress already had decided to devote a year to producing and directing when she learned about “Five.” Just over a year later, the film is set to premiere at 8 p.m. Monday on Lifetime, and Aniston said she was “way more involved in this than any other thing I had my name on.”
“Five” stars Patricia Clarkson, Rosario Dawson and Jeanne Tripplehorn and features an equally all-star roster of directors that includes Aniston, Demi Moore and Alicia Keys in her directorial debut.
“I just can’t wait for people to see it,” she said. “Making a film that’s special is wonderful, but when it’s actually dealing with a cause and dealing with something that attention needs to be paid to, that’s just something that fills you in such a way that it’s indescribable.”
After signing on as executive producers, Aniston and her production partner had to come up with the various stories and a format for telling them. Aniston called up “Friends” co-creator Marta Kauffman, who conceived of a story arc comprising five short films, each focusing on one woman facing a breast cancer diagnosis.
“I call it a film in five films,” Kauffman said. “I wanted them deeply interconnected and to feel like it was all one.”Aniston’s segment is about an oncologist (Tripplehorn) treating a woman (Clarkson) whose breast cancer diagnosis two years earlier inspired her to spend all her money and give away all her belongings. Then she learns her disease is in remission.
“I just loved the idea of this woman being told that she has a death sentence and she finally decides to start living her life because she’s been given a death sentence, and then she’s given another chance,” Aniston said. “The theme of it just really spoke to me, about living in the moment and just being aware.”