(Spoiler alert: Please don’t read on if you haven’t watched the series finale of “Big Little Lies.”)
HBO’s limited series “Big Little Lies” concluded on Sunday night with a shocking finale that tied up the show’s main mystery. That hasn’t stopped Nicole Kidman from arguing for a second season.
“The backstory of Bonnie is complicated, and not fully explored, which is probably why we need to do a season 2,” she told Entertainment Weekly about Zoe Kravitz’s character. “It indicates that every woman is holding some sort of secret or damage or something and that’s not fully explored. We don’t have any plans for a season 2 but the beauty of this is there are so many deep stories here that are ripe for mining. There are so many different ways to go with all of these women. This is such a small portion of their lives but I love that people have connected to them in such a deep way. And everyone in different ways to different women.”
Kidman played Celeste Wright, a former lawyer who on the surface looks happy with her husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgard), but beneath the beautiful house and the adorable kids, there’s darkness: He abuses her to the point where she has to hide her bruises and she thinks about leaving him.
“There were days and days of doing a lot of aggressive, really violent scenes,” she continued. “And I would go home and have a shower or have a bath and I would weep at home. And it would be like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening to me?’ And then one day, I just got a rock and threw it through a glass door! Yes. Where I was staying. And I threw a rock. I must have had a lot of pent-up [stress], because I was trying to hold it all in. I’ve never done that in my life. And then I just started crying and crying and crying. It just penetrated my psyche in a way a film never had.”
The actress, who was recently Oscar-nominated for “Lion,” also shared that the role took a physical toll on her.
“My body was in pain,” she said. “That’s how I describe it. I don’t usually take Advil and I would take Advil. I was living through it. I felt the necessity to do that for the truth of this story, which I feel is a very important story to tell. It’s insidious how these things happen. The things that start to become normal when they aren’t normal and the things we allow. And how a relationship can morph into where both people in it are not bad people. And he is very sick. He’s not well.”
“Big Little Lies” also starred Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, the show was based on the book by Liane Moriarty.
Whether there will be a second season is kind of left up in air — it was always intentioned to be a limited series, but Witherspoon recently mentioned there were brief talks for a season 2.