HBO’s miniseries Big Little Lies is a glossy whodunit that exposes the unsettling secrets that lay beneath the façade of the lives of four women - most poignantly the domestic violence that occurs between married couple Celeste (Nicole Kidman) and Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) behind closed doors. It is fiction, yes, but it beats with a very stark realness that as a viewer is difficult to watch. Yet, for Nicole Kidman, playing such a character was an emotionally devastating experience.
During The Hollywood Reporter’s roundtable interview, Kidman, along with Reese Witherspoon (star and co-producer of Big Little Lies), Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Lange, Elisabeth Moss and Chrissy Metz, discussed what it’s really like to portray complex women on-screen, and the unexpected ways it affects them off-screen.
When filming violent scenes between Celeste and Perry, Kidman decided against using a body double, but revealed that it took a toll. ‘There was one point when [director Jean-Marc Vallee] wanted to go back and reshoot me being slammed into the wardrobe because it wasn't hard enough,’ she explained. ‘I'm like, "I've got bruises because of how hard it was, so I can't believe that it didn't read that way." But as we all know, on film sometimes what you're feeling doesn't read. I felt my way through the character.’
The women discussed how when filming the director may yell ‘Cut!’, but inhabiting such a character isn’t as simple as that. ‘I remember lying on the floor in the last episode, being in my underwear and having just been really thrown around,’ Kidman recalled. ‘I just lay on the floor. I couldn't get up. I didn't want to get up. And I remember Jean-Marc coming over and putting a towel over me in between the takes.
‘I just felt completely humiliated and devastated. And angry inside. I went home and I threw a rock through a glass door.’
Two-time Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Lange agreed wth Kidman that the line between acting and reality can get blurred. ‘The amazing thing about being an actor is that your body doesn’t understand it’s make believe,’ she explained.
‘We’re not machines,’ Reese echoed. ‘And we are expected to turn it on and off, and sometimes it’s the most maddening aspect of what we do.’
The success of the first season of Big Little Lies – which was adapted from the novel by Liane Moriarty - has left viewers hungry for more. But while Witherspoon and Kidman have been dropping crumbs of hope that a second season is in the works, we may have to wait a little longer than we’d like.
However, the women have reportedly bought the rights to another of Moriarty’s novels of similar themes - Truly Madly Guilty, so the chance that they will unite at some stage is looking likely.
READ MORE: Reese Witherspoon Confirms Talks Of Big Little Lies Season Two