Jennifer Garner’s automotive is parked right over there, by the Prius, behind the lot. “It’s form of an extended drive,” she says, “so why don’t we go together? We are able to talk on the way in which.” Sounds good. I’ll drive with Garner, whom I’ve known for an hour and a half. Or 22 years, depending on the way you’re counting.

We’ve just spent the early afternoon in a woodworking studio in downtown Los Angeles. That’s what I call it, but I’ve been corrected. Technically, it’s “wood turning.” Garner spent dozens of hours here, a ground-floor industrial space the scale of a yoga studio with the decibel range of a speed-metal show, learning the craft from a master woodturner named Aaron as she prepared for her latest role as an artist within the Apple TV+ thriller The Last Thing He Told Me.

“It spoke to the mountain girl in me — it’s an enormous a part of Appalachian culture,” says Garner, 51, who grew up in West Virginia. She’s also really good at it. “First, we just did spindles, then we made rolling pins before we graduated to bowls.” Looks like she graduated with honors — the bowl she made that afternoon (after which gifted to me) is gorgeous. After the woodworking — wood turning — is finished, she sweeps the ground, vacuums up the sawdust, and brushes the chips off her cashmere sweater. It’s time for lunch.

From the surface, Garner’s automotive is a sleek, polished black BMW and, probably by design, not entirely welcoming — are the windows tinted? She chirps the locks open, we get in, and she or he pulls out of the parking zone guiding us toward lunch. A couple of pedestrians on the crosswalk do a double take, squinting into the windshield. Is that…? But in motion, Garner’s automotive is anonymous, a German luxury four-door that merges into the river of German luxury four-doors that’s the Los Angeles freeway system.