With Reese Witherspoon’s Schedule Cleared, Big Little Lies Season 2 Finally Seems to Be Happening
It feels like rumors have been swirling about a second season of HBO’s limited series Big Little Lies practically ever since Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley first picked up their kids from school in Monterey.
And now, months after Witherspoon said that the cast was “optimistic there might be more,” she’s now cleared her schedule by dropping out of Pale Blue Dot, an upcoming sci-fi film by Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo), which Witherspoon had been attached to as both a star and a producer since 2015. Previously, she had been set to begin filming in her role as an astronaut early next year—incidentally, around the same time that HBO is eyeing to start production of Big Little Lies season 2, according to “sources” that confirmed to TVLine that things should get rolling in spring 2018.
There’s still no official word from HBO, but two weeks ago, the series’s writer and creator, David E. Kelley, told a crowd at a panel hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that he was “kicking around ideas and trying to lasso the talent [and] get the band back together. It’s just a lot of logistical things. But I’m optimistic because everyone wants to do it. We feel we still have storytelling to do. No decision has been made yet, but we’re hopeful. Where we left it, I felt like it did open the opportunity for a lot more storytelling.”
A Look Back at Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern’s Beautiful Instagram Friendship
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern enjoy a beach sunset while on vacation during the weekend of the Big Little Lies finale.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern enjoy a beach sunset (and wine) while on vacation during the weekend of the Big Little Lies finale.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern take selfies and drink wine while on vacation during the weekend of the Big Little Lies finale.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern know how to have a good time while doing press tours for both Wild and Big Little Lies.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern celebrate Mother’s Day together. Their mothers watched the movie premiere of Wild while holding hands.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern know how to have a good time while doing press tours for both Wild and Big Little Lies.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern know how to have a good time while on set for both Wild and Big Little Lies.
Actors Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern became close with Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild. (And her dog, clearly.)
Back in 2014, actors Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern became very close with Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild.
Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern while on the press tour for their 2014 film Wild, in which Dern plays Witherspoon’s mother.
After all, when Witherspoon proclaimed her optimism back in August, she also resolutely stated that the issue was “totally” up to the author of the book the series is based on, Liane Moriarty. “The ball is definitely in her court because these characters were born of her mind and her imagination and we just want to see if she’s interested in creating more story about these characters,” Witherspoon explained. “It just comes down to: Do we have the story?”
As Moriarty indicated after the Emmy Awards, where Big Little Lies cleaned up, it seems that they do; she admitted that she was “thinking about” revisiting the show, meaning that she’s spent months doing so, because she was also “thinking about how ways this could continue” back in April.
One of the issues back then was also that the director Jean-Marc Vallée was “not for it,” but after eight Emmy wins, that problem has definitely been solved: “It’d be great to reunite the team and to do it,” he said after the awards. “We’ll see.”
Related: Alexander Skarsgård Found Those Naked Big Little Lies Scenes To Be “Quite Liberating”
Nicole Kidman Could Go on “Survivor” and Crush It:
