Big Little Lies fans are eager – and lucky – to see the “limited series” get a second season. In an interview this week with The Hollywood Reporter (THR), however, show creator, writer and producer David E. Kelley admitted that he didn’t think bringing the show back was the right move at first. The series, which is based off the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty, was originally intended to be a seven-episode limited series on HBO.
“I didn’t think it was a very good idea. We wrote it as a one-off and we ended it in a way that was very lyrical. But we ended on a lie. I get so protective of characters and series too that I don’t want to damage them in any way, and I so loved how we ended year one and I thought, ‘Let’s just leave it at that,’” Kelley told THR while being interviewed for the publication’s TV Producer of the Year award.
Ultimately, many things led Kelley to get on board with Season 2, he said. But the most important thing was “a creative analysis.”
“Liane wrote a novella of [new] stories, and most of them we’re using. But the genius one was introducing this character who’s being played by Meryl Streep. It’s a delicious character, and I felt bringing her in was both liberating and daunting. Daunting because she sets a high bar and you have to measure up, but liberating in that now the show’s not going to be compared to last year. There was freedom in that,” Kelley explained
Big Little Lies Season 2 doesn’t premiere until 2019, so Kelley still has hands full for a little while; however, the THR did ask him if he is wondering where his Netflix deal is, considering other TV producing greats Ryan Murphy (Glee) and Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy) both have reportedly won nine-figure-deal contracts. The producer said that he isn’t pining for such a deal as “it just feels like a lot to do.”
When it comes to making TV, the executive, who also created Boston Legal, Boston Public, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope, Doogie Howser, M.D. and L.A. Law, said: “I might be doing this five years from now, I might not.”