BRACE YOURSELVES FOR THE RETURN OF BIG LITTLE LIES
HOW DO YOU top a groundbreaking, multi-award-winning mini-series starring five of Hollywood’s biggest names? Answer: cave into the calls to film a second season and add a sixth name to the roster – the undisputed queen of the screen, Meryl Streep.
When HBO’S Big Little Lies launched in the spring of 2017, it became instant appointment viewing, not only for its stellar cast – Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Zoë Kravitz, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley – and their characters’ drop-dead stunning seafront homes and deeply enviable wardrobes, but also for its spookily prescient subject matter, sparking conversations about sexual abuse and assault six months before the #Metoo movement exploded.
Adapted from the best-selling novel by Liane Moriarty, the show was only ever supposed to run for one seven-episode season. But that was never going to be enough. Mercifully, the glamorous gang are back for a second season, due to air in June.
In LA last week, Grazia got a sneak preview of the first trailer for the new season in the company of its all-star cast, who revealed the reasons they decided to return. ‘ We had no idea there was going to be that kind of public response, and that it was going to converge with this moment of women sensing their need to be leaders, to step up and talk about their experiences with strength and with encouragement from other women,’ said Reese, who, along with Nicole, is also an executive producer. ‘ We felt that a season two was a great opportunity to talk about: “Now what?” We’ve talked about trauma, we’ve experienced trauma, we see each other’s trauma, but how do we cope with it? And how do we go on?’
The trailer shows ‘ The Monterey Five’, as they are being labelled in their community, struggling with the burden of the secret they are collectively harbouring – just how did Celeste’s husband Perry, played by Alexander Skarsgård in the first series – die? ‘ Their lives, like all of our lives, seem very well put together on the surface, but then the fissures and fractures begin to emerge,’ said David E Kelley, who wrote the series. ‘ There is a big fault line that lies under all of it, so once the crevices start to widen, it escalates pretty quickly.’
And into their collective, roiling secret, Perry’s mother, Mary Louise – played by Meryl – arrives, to seek the truth about what happened to her son. The Oscarwinning actress revealed that she herself was as much of a fangirl of the first season as us. ‘I was addicted to it,’ she enthused. ‘I thought it was an amazing exercise in what we know and what we don’t know about people; about family, about friends – how it flirted with the mystery of things.’ She also believes that it was a story that arrived at the perfect moment. ‘ This exploration of abuse and its provenance, where it comes from, why it continues, how people survive it – all those questions were in the air and this piece fed a hunger.’ Our appetite for more is duly whetted.