Big Little Lies star Shailene Woodley spills on the new season
Shailene Woodley never expected to do a second season of the hit TV series Big Little Lies. But now, she reveals how the experience has changed her.
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Shailene Woodley had her head completely lathered in hair dye when it hit her that Big Little Lies wasn’t just a good TV show, but a bona fide water cooler sensation.
“I was out of the [US] when it came out, and I got back and went to the hair salon, and I’m sitting there and I start hearing all of these whispers. I heard women say, [whispers] ‘Celeste’ and I heard ‘Bonnie’ and I heard ‘Jane’, and I was like, ‘what is happening?” the charismatic 27-year-old tells News Corp Australia.
“And my hair stylist was like, ‘you don’t know what’s going on?’ People were in the midst of watching the series and it was all anyone was talking about. None of them knew that I was there and it was odd to be in the middle of the culture going like, ‘wow, if this is affecting salon life, it must be something that people like’.”
That’s something of an understatement.
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The show - based on Australian author Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel - would defy the rules of instant gratification streaming and binge-watching to become weekly appointment television. Waiting a week for an episode almost felt old school.
“I was so surprised it did as well as it did,” Woodley admits. “I mean, we expected it to do well because we had all of these great actors involved but I don’t think any of us expected it to have the sensational response that it had.”
The show tells the story of a group of mostly affluent women, played by a stellar cast including Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz and Woodley, all living seemingly beautiful lives in beautiful California beach-front mansions.
But the cracks underneath, forged by domestic violence, extra-marital affairs and sexual abuse, threaten to tear them all apart.
“I think it shows the honest truth, which is females are not nice to each other a lot
of the time,” maintains Woodley.
The burgeoning #MeToo movement also proved timely given the show’s main themes centred around the shame that can be associated with domestic violence and sexual assault.
“MeToo was a grassroots movement but Hollywood lit fire to it in a way,” she says. “So the timing and the alignment was so wild in so many beautiful ways.”
Of course, Big Little Lies was only ever meant to be one season, given it used all of Moriarty’s source material, but the show’s incredible global popularity meant the prospect of a second serving couldn’t be ignored.
“I don’t think anyone had any intention of doing it again,” recalls Woodley, “but the feedback was so extreme and so loud and so excited it was kind of hard to go, well, why not do a season two?”
Moriarty jumped back into gear and penned a “novella” on which the second series is based. The Sydney-born author also reportedly asked her mate Kidman to give Meryl Streep a call to gauge whether the multiple Oscar-winner would be interested in joining the cast as the mother of the abusive - and ultimately doomed - Perry (played by Alexander Skarsgard).
Streep surprised them all by leaping at the chance.
“It was the first time I’d got to work with Meryl Streep – no big deal – and the rumours are true … she’s brilliant,” laughs Woodley.
“There’s this thing when you work with her, like how is she going to be? And you put her on a pedestal a little bit, but she walks into every single room and she immediately deflates the tension by holding the space equally. It doesn’t matter if you’re a reporter, Nicole Kidman or a person on the street, she treats every single person with the same regard, and in the same way and I really respect that.”
As for Kidman, Woodley describes her as “special.”
“Nicole really stands out in a way that is effortless and in a way that most of us don’t,” Woodley says, almost wistfully.
“She’s a woman who really appreciates the small things. A tree is something to revere on the same level as a president, she’s so interested in the in-betweens and that was something that I was very, very affected by.”
Prior to filming Big Little Lies, Woodley admits that she had been reevaluating her career.
She had been left slightly disillusioned by the final installment of the Divergent series (based on the young adult, dystopian novels by Veronica Roth) but says she “never wanted to quit” acting.
“It’s in my blood. I’ve been doing it for 23 years but I needed a break to explore other things. I was at that cross section in my life and I really needed to take a step back from everything to just check in with myself and have some human experiences outside of this bubble. As actors, all we do is play characters or talk about ourselves and it’s not always healthy.”
But Big Little Lies and the role of Jane - who is arguably the emotional centre of
the show - drew her right back in.
“I did need to fall back in love with acting, and Big Little Lies did that for me.”
* Big Little Lies, 11am/8.30pm, Monday June 10, Foxtel’s Fox Showcase
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