LEADING LADY
From Emmy success Big Little Lies to her new rom com Home Again, the Legally Blonde star is helping to put women at the forefront in TV and film
WHEN Reese Witherspoon and her Big Little Lies co-stars took to the stage at the Emmy Awards, they were met with rapturous applause.
Hand in hand, the five stars – an indomitable tribe made up of Nicole Kidman, Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz and Shailene Woodley, no less – were proof the tide is turning in Hollywood.
In fact, this year’s ceremony – the 69th – will go down in history for its celebration of women in front of and behind the camera.
The irresistible HBO show, based on the book by Australian author Liane Moriarty, cleaned up. Big Little Lies won eight major awards, including Outstanding Limited Series.
As she accepted that award alongside her cast mate and co-producer Kidman, 41-year-old Witherspoon declared: “It’s been an incredible year for women in television.
“Can I just say, bring women to the front of their own stories, and make them the hero of their own stories.”
Gripping the star’s hand, Kidman, who also took home the best actress award, added: “This is a friendship that then created opportunities.
“It created opportunities out of our frustration, because we weren’t getting offered great roles – so now more great roles for women, please.”
Just days after delivering her hard-to-ignore message, Witherspoon was still processing the night’s events when I met her in a London hotel last week.
The actress, who won an Academy Award in 2006 for her role in Walk the Line, admitted: “It’s been amazing. It’s been a really interesting time.
“I’d never gone to the Emmys before, so it was really fun. There are so many talented women there – Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Oprah…
“We’ve been getting so many well wishes. People are really responding to how many women won.”
Is she seeing a change in the scripts she’s being offered, then?
“Nope,” the Louisiana-born star fired back, exasperated. “That’s why I’m buying books and turning them into movies, because the scripts are dreadful.”
Witherspoon has already headed up such novel-to-screen adaptations as Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl under her production banner Pacific Standard.
She said: “Honestly, the things that come at me normally are just dreadful. I think when you’re