One of the sweetest friendships in Hollywood nearly never came to be.
In her upcoming memoir “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” Ina Garten wrote that her assistant once “dismissed” a letter from Jennifer Garner asking to appear on her cooking show, years before they formed a close bond.
“People who didn’t understand that the guests on my show were my friends in real life often wrote to see if they could cook with me,” Garten, 76, said in her book out Oct. 1, per People.
“[My assistant] Barbara handled my correspondence and always sent polite letters explaining how the show worked,” the renowned chef recalled. “One day, she’d offhandedly dismissed a letter from Jennifer Garner because she apparently didn’t realize who she was.”
Garten said she “had an instinct” about Garner, 52, and foresaw the two being friends.
“She seemed smart, funny and so grounded, very un-Hollywood,” Garten wrote. “I thought she was someone I could have fun with.”
“I reached out to her when we were shooting an episode in Los Angeles, made a date to cook together, and, as we both suspected, felt an instant connection,” Garten went on. “We’ve been friends ever since.”
The “Deadpool & Wolverine” star previously talked about wanting to befriend Garten in a 2009 interview with W magazine.
“I know somebody who is a friend of hers, and she says she’s going to get us together,” said Garner.
“I tried to get on Ina’s show. I tried to use my, well, you know…I say, use what you have to make the world better or for yourself! But eventually she just said, ‘I’m sorry, I only use my real friends on the show.’ I felt like, What are you saying? That we’re not friends? I know everything about you!” she added.
Garner appeared on Garten’s Food Network series, “Be My Guest With Ina Garten,” in April. They share laughs while making a cornbread and pizza crackers at Garten’s home in East Hampton, New York.
“I just admire her enormously,” Garten told People about the “Alias” actress.
“She is grounded and principled and smart and incredible parent and great cook. She’s just extraordinary,” Garten added.
The “Barefoot Contessa” host recalled that the pair met around the time of Garner’s 40th birthday in 2012.
“She very sweetly invited me to her birthday party, which was amazing,” Garten said to People. “And I loved it because it was 40 women that were invited in their sweat clothes and they were instructed not to have their hair done or anything, hair in a ponytail, sweat, clothes and sneakers.”
“And they were wonderful, wonderful women and it was a very good time,” she added.
In her memoir, Garten makes a number of shocking confessions including that she briefly separated from her husband, Jeffrey Garten, in the 1970s.
On her Instagram in April, Garten said that writing her book “was a completely new experience for me.”
“There is no recipe for writing a memoir, and the process helped me see that what happened to me in my 20s and 30s prepared me for what was to come,” she said. “I’m so looking forward to sharing my story with you!”
