Big little lies
What: Seven-part adaptation of best-selling novel about a group of parents in an affluent seaside community where a murder takes place. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, Alexander Skarsgard, Adam Scott, James Tupper.
When: Premieres 9 tonight.
Where: HBO.
What: Seven-part adaptation of best-selling novel about a group of parents in an affluent seaside community where a murder takes place. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, Alexander Skarsgard, Adam Scott, James Tupper.
When: Premieres 9 tonight.
Where: HBO.
“No one knows nothing about anybody — you can write that down and underline it,” a character tells a detective investigating a murder in the first episode of HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” which begins Sunday.
We soon find that’s true in the seven-episode limited series, which is being co-produced by Oscar-winning actresses Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. The two also star in the adaptation of the best-seller by Liane Moriarty, which centers on a group of warring parents in the upscale area of Monterey.
TV veteran David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal,” “Goliath”) wrote all the episodes, while Jean-Marc Vallée (“Dallas Buyer’s Club,” “Wild”) directed them.
“Big Little Lies” revolves around five women who are the parents of first-graders — the others played by Shailene Woodley, Zoe Kravitz and Laura Dern — and their husbands. The story opens, though, with the investigation of a murder while flashing back to an incident that may have sparked the killing.
That event takes place on the first day at school for the first-graders and their uptight parents. When it appears one of the children may have choked another, battle lines are drawn, resentments boil over and secrets come out. The identity of the victim is kept secret as the plot unfolds; so beneath the drama there is always the dangling question of who killed whom.
Witherspoon, who has taken on the role of producer in recent years, says she is always on the lookout for something about women that she has never seen before. After reading an advance copy of Moriarty’s book in 2014, she got Kidman to read it, and the two agreed to produce it.
“With this piece, I feel like it was such a unique opportunity to have women of every age, every color talking about motherhood,” says Witherspoon, who has three children. “Motherhood is the great equalizer. Parenthood is a great equalizer, and socioeconomically, it sort of brings these five disparate women together in a way that they clash, but they also understand.”
Kidman adds that as much as there is conflict between the female characters in “Big Little Lies,” “There were parts about women helping and supporting each other, which were very important to Reese and I.”
Witherspoon plays Madeline, who she describes as a “bossy, know-it-all busybody.” She’s a mostly stay-at-home mom with a teenage daughter from a prior marriage who is beginning to strike out on her own, and her younger child — from her second marriage to Ed (Adam Scott) — is a sophisticated first-grader she is trying to keep up with.
Madeline is still angry over being abandoned years before when she was a young mother by her ex-husband Nathan (James Tupper). Now she waffles between guilt and aggressively getting into everybody’s business. The situation is aggravated by her ex’s marriage to a young yoga instructor (Kravitz), who also has a first-grader at the same school.
In an era of “helicopter parents,” all of the adults in “Big Little Lies” seem to care about their children’s welfare but often can’t get past their own hang-ups.
“I’ve had kids at 22, 27, and then at 37, and there is a wild difference,” observes Witherspoon. “I think that’s part of what is so interesting about ‘Big Little Lies’ and about motherhood. It’s about what you think you’re creating for your children and when it’s really just an artifice.”
Kidman plays Celeste, who is married to the younger Perry (Alexander Skarsgard). They have twin boys and appear to be the loving couple. However, he has anger issues that manifest physically.
The Oscar-winning actress says that when she read the book she related to all the women. “There’s just such an array of emotions in it.”
Kelley says he was drawn to the project because of the characters. “What was challenging was living up to the complications of those characters,” he says, “and having to make cuts because there are nuggets in the book.”
Witherspoon, who worked with Vallée on “Wild,” says the director doesn’t like a lot of rehearsal. “He more encourages us to have dinner and, like, drink wine and talk about our lives and become real friends.”
That suited her, because she found it fun to work with so many women.
“Nicole and I were reflecting about this during the shooting,” Witherspoon says. “For 25 years, I have been the only woman on set, so I had no other women to talk to. They call it the Smurfette Syndrome — where there are 100 Smurfs around, but there’s only one girl.”
Being collaborators also suited Kidman and Witherspoon.
“We’re very, very close friends, and we’re able to talk about anything,” says Kidman. “A lot of the conversation is personal and then we would do work, which is great. I love that it’s about women coming together and making something happen with friendship being the core of it.”
Witherspoon adds that she is at a stage in her career where “I want to be contributing and working with people that I like and love, and this is this was the perfect combination.”
At one point in “Big Little Lies,” Witherspoon’s Madeline only half-jokingly screams, “I want more,” the character expressing her frustration of never having a real career.
It also sounds like Witherspoon’s persistence when it comes to women and film.
“I’m passionate because things have to change. We have to start seeing women as they really are on film and not just in movie theaters on a tiny budget,” she says. “We need to see real women’s experience, whether it involves domestic violence, whether it involves sexual assault, whether it involves motherhood or romance or infidelity or divorce. We need to see these things because we as human beings need to we learn from art. And what can you do if you never see it reflected?”
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