If you haven’t watched “Alias,” you should go do that. And maybe check out “Felicity” while you’re at it, because the shows have a much more direct connection than most people probably realize.
Sure, it’s common knowledge that J.J. Abrams created both shows, but at first glance, a show about a girl who follows her crush to college across the country (“Felicity”) and a show about a girl who is a super-spy (“Alias”) don’t have a whole lot in common. The fun twist here, though, is that Abrams actually came up with “Alias” thanks to a stray intrusive thought he had while making “Felicity.” As he told The New York Times back in 2001, “I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be really cool if Felicity were recruited by the C.I.A.? Then she’d find strength she didn’t know she had and she wouldn’t be able to tell her friends about it.'”
Once that concept lodged into Abrams’ mind, he soon turned to an actor he’d already worked with on “Felicity” — Jennifer Garner, who briefly appeared on the series as Hannah Bibb. During TVLine’s 10th anniversary oral history of “Alias,” Abrams explained: “When I was writing the pilot, having worked with Jen on Felicity, she was in my mind as a very strong contender for the role. And so Jen kept coming up in my mind as a potential candidate for this. And no one else did. But I was trying not to think of Jen because I wanted Sydney to be her own thing that then Jen could bring to life, or whomever. But there was no one else I really considered but her.”
ABC didn’t want Jennifer Garner in Alias because of how different her Felicity character was
“Alias” may have started as a mere idea while J.J. Abrams was making “Felicity,” but it eventually became its own phenomenon. Part of the reason for that is the show is, for the large part, just really good, particularly because of Garner’s portrayal of Sydney Bristow. When we first meet Sydney, she’s juggling a relationship, friendships, and graduate school while working for SD-6, which she believes is a covert group within the CIA. After she tells her fiancé the truth about her job and SD-6 arranges to have him killed, Sydney discovers that she’s actually working for a terrorist cell and decides to become a secret agent to bring SD-6 down from the inside, teaming up with another double agent: her estranged father Jack Bristow (a perfectly cast Victor Garber).
Interestingly, executive producer Jeff Pinkner revealed during the same oral history that ABC didn’t love Garner as Sydney, partly because her “Felicity” role was so different. “J.J. had to fight to have her cast in the lead. ABC at the time was not interested,” Pinkner recalled. “She had played a very small role in ‘Felicity’ as a much different sort of girl who’s awkward in her own skin. So J.J. fought for her. I think she blew everyone away with her dedication.”
Thankfully, Garner ended up playing Sydney, which proved to be her star-making role — “Alias” proved to be a ratings smash hit, arguably exceeding the cultural cachet of the “Felicity” love triangle Team Ben vs. Team Noel debates. If you want to experience them for yourself, “Felicity” is streaming on Hulu and Disney+, and “Alias” is streaming on Disney+.