The men of Big Little Lies reveal their thoughts on the hit TV show
The male stars of Big Little Lies have revealed what it’s been like working on a show dominated by an A-list cast of female actors.
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“Women should run everything.”
The flawed, weak characters they bring to life on screen would not agree, but that’s the view shared by the men of Big Little Lies — who have revealed that working on the hit show has been a game-changing experience.
As the second season airs on Foxtel, Adam Scott, (Ed Mackenzie), James Tupper (Nathan Carlson), Jeffrey Nordling (Gordon Klein) and Douglas Smith (Corey Brockfield) sat down with News Corp Australia at New York’s Whitby Hotel to discuss working on a show that is not only dominated by A-grade female acting talent — Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern — but was also produced, directed and first created by women.
And it turns out they are all happy to be overshadowed.
“It was incredible to be a part of something that is revolutionary in a way because it is rare, becoming less rare thankfully, but especially a couple of years ago when the first season came out having something that is purely 100 per cent female driven was just not happening,” Scott, who plays Witherspoon’s downtrodden husband Ed, said. “The fact that a lot of the leads on the show hadn’t had a job before where they have that much to say to other female characters, where not every conversation they have is about a man, is incredible and its now spurred all these other projects.”
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Season two sees our favourite Monterey locals back as Kidman (Celeste Wright), Witherspoon (Madeline Mackenzie), Dern (Renata Klein), Zoe Kravitz (Bonnie Carlson) and Shailene Woodley (Jane Chapman) struggling to deal with the huge secret they are collectively holding on to from the first season.
The Monterey men, or the ‘beta males’ as the actors sometimes refer to themselves, said the show has been groundbreaking in the way it tells women’s stories and has helped convince TV executives that female-led stories can be not only compelling but commercially successful.
“We need more voices in entertainment,” Scott said. “Not just from women but people of colour and women of colour. We need those voices. I don’t need to see another show about a middle-aged man trying to juggle his work and his kids. We need other stories and we are getting them and that’s exciting. From where I sit it’s great. It is exciting and television is better than ever in large part because these other voices are emerging.”
And the stories will keep coming. Kidman has bought the rights to Moriarty’s next book, Nine Perfect Strangers, while the Oscar winner will partner again with Reese Witherspoon to produce, Truly Madly Guilty, another adaptation from the Big Little Lies author.
“There is a huge cultural shift and there is a huge desire for these stories and I think there has been for some time but we are finally hearing these stories and the opportunity is also out there so it is a great moment for it all to be happening,” he said.
Former Parks and Recreation star Scott said there was a distinct difference on Big Little Lies compared to other shows he has worked on.
“Women should run everything. This set is the most functional, pleasant work environment. Reese and Nicole are excellent producers and the environment, it was just fun,” he said. “I knew it was important and significant (when we were shooting it) just because it is by women, about women. It was great to see it actually had that impact once it was released.”
Former Desperate Housewives star Jeffrey Nordling, who plays Dern’s dodgy husband Gordon, said he was inspired by the leadership of both Kidman and Witherspoon behind the scenes and their attention to detail.
“Laura (Dern) and I shot a scene in the second season and word came back that we had to reshoot it. I was talking to Reese and she was like, ‘It was so (slow) and it has to move’ so we reshot it a vastly different way. It is great to have eyes like that which have so much experience on it,” he said.
Big Love star Douglas Smith, who plays new character Corey Brockfield, a potential love interest for Woodley’s character, said it would not have felt authentic addressing issues like rape, domestic violence and post traumatic shock disorder if the material was written by a man.
“I would have felt less safe tackling that sort of subject matter if there wasn’t that aspect in the storytelling,” he said. “Shailene is a really inspiring powerful person to tackle the issues that the show does.
“One of the first things I connected with after reading the script was how it handled PTSD,” he said. “We have a long way to go in destigmatising that.”
Smith said the women on Big Little Lies 2 really empowered each other.
He said Kidman and Witherspoon put complete faith in director Andrea Arnold, in a similar way to how author Moriarty trusted the Oscar winners with her novella and declined invitations to hang out on set.
James Tupper, who plays Kravitz’s husband Nathan, said the male characters in Big Little Lies are clueless about what their wives are dealing with. He said it was a good lesson to men that they have to not only listen to their partners but also hear what they are saying.
“If a woman experiences sexual abuse or rape she isn’t going to come home and tell her husband, that’s the problem,” he said. “Then suddenly there is a lie between them and the guy wants to fix it and go beat that guy up and doesn’t want to help her process the experience. I think men have to evolve. If women evolve, men do too.”
Big Little Lies 2 airs on Foxtel every Monday at 11am and 8:30pm AEST.
Originally published as The men of Big Little Lies reveal their thoughts on the hit TV show
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