This weekend, the first trailer for HBO’s Big Little Lies limited series, which will air in 2017, was released, teasing performances from its all-star cast including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Adam Scott, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz, and Alexander Skarsgård, who, it should be mentioned, you might not recognize in the quick, fragmentary trailer, unless you go into it knowing that he’s the man behind the mutton chops:
The teaser is set to “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” and while it explains nothing whatsoever, there is, of course, the novel synopsis (or, if you’ve read the novel, by Liane Moriarty, there is, of course, that) to refer to for answers. The novel centers around three women who meet and become friends when their kids begin kindergarten together — and their friendships unveil certain traumas from their pasts.
Reese Witherspoon plays Madeleine and Nicole Kidman plays Celeste, two women who develop a relationship with Jane, a much younger, single mother (played by Woodley). But two of these friends are also grappling with acts of violence committed by men in (or now out of) their lives; their stories collide in unexpected ways, toward unexpected ends.
The series is directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who’s reuniting with Witherspoon and Dern after his work with them in Wild. From the looks of it, this has a similarly energized, vertiginous directorial quality to that film.
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