Big Little Lies: how MeToo and Meryl Streep inspired a second series - and what we learned in a sneak preview
Featuring easily the greatest concentration of A-list actresses ever seen together in one television drama – Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz – HBO’s Big Little Lies was always set to cause a stir when it launched in the Spring of 2017. What no one could have predicted, however, was just how prescient its subject matter – sexual violence and abuse, female solidarity and empowerment - would feel just seven months later, when the #MeToo movement began to take hold, challenging misogyny, harassment and abuses of power at all levels, in myriad industries and countries.
Based on a novel by Liane Moriarty, and set in the wealthy, well-heeled northern Californian town of Monterey, the show not only fast became essential water-cooler conversation, but also swept the boards at every awards ceremony, winning Emmys and Golden Globes for its stars Dern, Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard, but also for Witherspoon and Kidman as producers. Little wonder, then, that what was only ever intended to be a single seven-part miniseries is now back for a second season.
On Friday, at the annual Television Critics Association (TCA) conference in Pasadena, California, the first trailer of the new season, due to begin in June, was screened, as the creator and cast of the show – plus one notable new addition – took to the stage to answer questions. Here’s what we learnt:
1. Perry Wright (Skarsgard) is dead, but the Monterey Five are far from carefree
The tense trailer makes clear that the death of Perry has brought no peace to his wife, Celeste (Kidman), whom he would regularly beat, or Jane (Woodleigh), whom he also subjected to sexual violence, nor the other three women who were party to his death, Renata (Dern), Madeleine (Witherspooon) and Bonnie (Kravitz). All are wracked with paranoia and struggling with the lie they are living as they collectively cover up the true circumstances of his death.
"We now have this thing that binds us, so watching us all do this dance together, because of this lie that we all told, is interesting to watch," said Kravitz.
"We come back to their lives, and like all of our lives, they seem very well put together on the surface, but then the fissures and the fractures begin to emerge," said David E Kelley, the show’s creator. "There is a big fault line that lies under all of them, which is this event that happened last year. Once the crevices start to widen, it escalates pretty quickly."
2. Perry’s mother - played by Meryl Streep - arrives in town to seek the truth
When Liane Moriarty (who wrote this season with David E Kelley) created a mother-in-law character for Celeste for season two, she named her Mary Louise as a "subliminal message" to Streep, whose real name is also Mary Louise. She perhaps didn’t need to, however.
"I loved this show, I was addicted to it," said Streep. "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, was unsaid, unshown, unknown - that was the gravitational pull of the piece, and it was so exciting."
"I am playing someone who is dealing with whatever the deficits of her parenting were, and the mysteries in that, and how you can’t go back in time and fix something," she said. "Because I have four grown children, that was interesting to me."
3. It goes deeper, not broader
"We take up the story that we left off on last year – at the lie – and we build out on how that lie is going to permeate the world of Monterey and the people who make it up," said Kelley. "Bonnie, Zoe’s character, wasn’t explored in the show to the depth that it was in the book, so there’s more opportunity for that," says Kidman. "And also having done what she has done, what is going to happen now?"
4. This season is made with a 'female gaze’
While season one was directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who also made Sharp Objects and Demolition, season two - which will also be seven episodes - is under the direction of Britain’s Andrea Arnold, director of Fishtank.
"Andrea really mines the emotional centre of a character and story," said Kelley.
5. It’s the show the world was ready for
"I’m not sure what comes first, the chicken or the egg," said Streep. "There is an incipient awareness, a readiness, the nerve endings are open to explore these issues. 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 – there was a ready audience, I would say."
"You smell that it is necessary," she continued. "You really feel like it owns this place, and you feel like you have something to say about it."
6. The #MeToo movement inspired season two
"We had no idea that there was going to be that sort of public response to the show, that it was going to converge with this moment of women sensing their need to be leaders, and step up and talk about their experiences with strength and with the encouragement of other women," said Witherspoon.
"But that is part of the reason that we felt like a season two was [important], to talk about: now what? We’ve talked about trauma, we’ve experienced trauma, we’ve seen each other’s trauma, but how do we cope with it, and how do we go on? How do we carry on? That was a big theme that we explored in season two."
"For Celeste, what is the aftermath of abuse when the partner is gone?’ asks Kidman, rhetorically. "It doesn’t mean you are healed."
7. There (probably) won’t be a third season
"There’s no such plan now - it’s just one and two," says Kelley. "We like where we are at the end of Season Two, so that will probably be it."
"That’s what you said last time, babe," chirped Witherspoon. "You sat right there and you said exactly the same thing."
Big Little Lies returns to HBO and Sky Atlantic in June
