The best thing about must-see TV in the age of technology is the immediacy. After the shocking finale of HBO’s Big Little Lies last night (spoiler alert warning!), audiences can have their favorite stars from the program help them cope with the sudden twists and turns.
Nicole Kidman sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the finale. Kidman stars as Celeste Wright in the series, a lawyer and wife who faces abuse from her husband Perry Wright (played by Alexander Skarsgard). The emotional upheaval of her work on the show has been almost unparalleled in her career so far, and EW pressed her to see how she felt after filming such heart-wrenching scenes.
“One of the most important scenes in the series is when I go and find Max and hold him and whisper to him, and say, ‘People do bad things but that doesn’t mean that’s you. We can change this. I’m here.’ She deals with her child with love instead of punishment. That to me is Celeste’s shining moment,” Kidman says. “That’s her heart and I love that’s the choice there. She knows she’s responsible. Though they weren’t seeing [the abuse], they were absorbing it. She feels that and she knows that’s the parenting that’s been going on and it’s affected one of their children. And that’s devastating to her. It’s also why she can finally leave. This is what I find deeply sad, I’ll put up with things, I’ll absorb thing, as long as my children are protected. As soon as my children are exposed, and she sees it, then she can act, then she can move, then she’s propelled. And that just cuts me to my core.”
EW then brings up another twist from the finale, and asks Kidman what she thinks about Bonnie pushing him down the stairs. Kidman responds, “The backstory of Bonnie is complicated, and not fully explored, which is probably why we need to do a season 2. 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.”
Now that Big Little Lies has secured a strong finish to the season, excitement is whirling around the possibility of season 2. While Kidman is working on a film in the foreseeable future (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), she expresses faith in the style that helped Big Little Lies come to be: “The truth of it is I love auteurs and I love philosophical filmmakers and that’s why I love that Big Little Lies got made, because as much as it seems like a sure thing now, it wasn’t. I like the high-wire act of it. I believe in not towing the line. Conformity is what I run from.”