Jennifer Garner had already learned how much rejection comes with acting when one particular no sent her out of Los Angeles altogether. She had tested for a new role on The West Wing, wanted it badly and got close enough to imagine herself joining Aaron Sorkin’s White House drama.
When she did not get the part, Garner went to Palm Springs alone. During the Aug. 25 episode of Aspire with Emma Grede, she recalled making her first solo trip there and spending “a couple of days” sitting with the disappointment, according to PEOPLE.
She did not stay in that career valley for long. “Two weeks later, Alias came to me,” Garner said. The J.J. Abrams spy drama cast her as Sydney Bristow and turned the working actress into the lead of a network series that would run for five seasons.
More than two decades later, Garner uses the timing as one of her favorite examples of how little an actor can know about what follows a rejection. “Rejection is God’s protection,” she said. “Whatever that is, I’m all for that.”
Garner Says She Had to Go to the Desert and ‘Mourn’ the Role
This was not an audition Garner could shrug off on the drive home. She had reached the testing stage and was deeply invested in getting the job. “God, I wanted it so badly,” she told Grede. When she lost it, she said, “I had to go to the desert.”
Garner described arriving in Palm Springs by herself for the first time and simply staying there for a few days. The Hollywood Reporter reported that she characterized the process as “mourning” the loss of such a good show.
The experience came during a career already filled with auditions that got tantalizingly close. Garner told Grede that actors can invest everything in landing a job, finally get it and still watch the project go nowhere. She considers herself good at bouncing back, but the West Wing rejection was different enough to require a temporary retreat.
The Role Garner Wanted Was Ainsley Hayes
Garner did not identify the character during her new conversation with Grede, but she has named the role herself before. In a 2026 Flaunt interview, she said she had auditioned for Ainsley Hayes, the Republican attorney ultimately played by Emily Procter.
Garner called losing Ainsley the biggest professional rejection of her career. Part of the attraction was Sorkin’s writing. “I love words,” she told Flaunt, explaining that she loved the density of his dialogue and wanted the role intensely.Sorkin even sent Garner a note after the decision was made.
‘Alias’ Turned the Rejection Into a Very Different Career Story
Alias premiered on ABC in September 2001 with Garner at the center as Sydney Bristow. The role required her to move between espionage, action sequences, elaborate disguises and Sydney’s increasingly complicated family life, giving her something far larger than the recurring West Wing job she had originally been chasing.
The Television Academy nominated Garner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series four years in a row, from 2002 through 2005. The show remained on ABC for five seasons and ended in May 2006.
Garner’s attachment to it has lasted much longer. In the same Aspire conversation, she recalled how emotional the final stretch of production became and said she still has never watched the series finale because Victor Garber’s Jack Bristow dies. “I just can’t see it,” she said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “I can’t even see it.”