Zoë Kravitz says that Big Little Lies is done—for real this time
The HBO limited series already got an extended lease on life with a second season
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Sure, we’d all like to see Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley back onscreen together again, but don’t get your hopes up for a third season of Big Little Lies. In a new video for GQ, Kravitz is asked to weigh in on the HBO show’s return, and her answer sounds pretty definitive.
“We talked about doing a season three a lot, and unfortunately, Jean-Marc Vallée, our incredible director, passed away this last year, which is heartbreaking, and I just can’t imagine going on without him,” the Kimi actor says. “He really was the visionary for that show. So unfortunately, it’s done.”
Ahead of the season two finale in 2019, Casey Bloys, then president of HBO, said that reuniting the all-star cast for a third time was “not realistic.” Amidst the various shake-ups happening at Warner Bros. Discovery, Bloys remains on board at the company and was recently named chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max.
Of course, the second season was already an extended lease on life for Big Little Lies. Based on a novel by Liane Moriarty, the show’s initial run was designed to have a conclusive end, and it campaigned as a limited series at the Emmys—which it won plenty of. However, given Big Little Lies’ success, it’s no surprise that HBO wanted to go back for more. Moriarty was enlisted to develop a new story for the Monterey Five, and it didn’t hurt that Meryl Streep invited herself to the party.
While getting the beloved cast back together—with the addition of Streep—was obviously welcomed by fans, the second season of Big Little Lies wasn’t quite as warmly received and was reportedly plagued by creative issues behind the scenes. Whether or not a third season could have returned to the heights of the first will have to remain a mystery.
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I liked the first season a lot; the second season was really just more of the same, which was… fine. Something that’s really great the first time is inherently not quite as great the second time if it doesn’t find anything quite as fresh, since newness is part (not all, just part, calm down) of what makes the experience interesting.I’m not saying I wouldn’t watch a third season if it happened, but I didn’t finish the second season really wanting to spend more time with these people.
I don’t think I remember a single thing about the second season other than Meryl Streep being in it.
I remember the incredibly dumb custody battle where Kidman and Streep’s characters battled it out in a courtroom that bore absolutely no resemblance to reality.
There’s just no excuse for how shoddy the writing was.
And remember Corey the aquarium guy who might be Jane’s new boyfriend but also might be an undercover cop and who regardless just sort of disappeared after raising all these questions? And remember Renata attacking Gordon’s toy trains? And remember the exploration of how Perry’s mom shaped him into a monster that was hinted at but never went anywhere? Because I do. So much bad writing.I struggle to come up with an example of worse writing, or an example of a show whose writing fell off more dramatically from one season to the next. The second season of BLL swore me off of David E. Kelley permanently. I won’t start watching one of his shows unless its whole run is finished and has been well received from start to finish. I don’t trust that he can land a show. He pulls the same shit all the time: He releases 3 solid episodes to good critical reviews, and then by episode 5 it’s all gone to shit. He cannot develop and execute a story. And he and Jean-Marc Vallee completely fucked over Andrea Arnold on season 2, also. I know this article starts by saying we’d all like to see a season 3, but I strongly disagree. I can’t think of a show that needs a season 3 less than BLL. Season two retroactively made season 1 seem worse. Season 3 would only do more damage.
I forgot a lot of that until you reminded me. Thanks a fucking lot.It was terrible, wasn’t it? A basic plot has to be the foundation behind any drama. It doesn’t matter how stacked your cast is if the basic storyline has gaping holes. Careful writing should be far cheaper than any other element of a TV show like Big Little Lies, and yet Kelley decided, “Fuck it, I’ll skimp on that.”I used to enjoy The Practice, and I assumed that this show would be reasonably watchable the way that show was. But the Nineties were a long time ago, and Kelley should have hung it up then.
REMEMBER BONNIE’S MOM’S VOODOO VISIONS?!?! Once you start thinking about all the awfulness, it just comes rushing back at you. There was a really great story that could have been told in season 2, mostly revolving around Perry’s mom and the detective starting to slowly unravel what actually happened, all while Celeste and Jane and Madeline try to get at the root of Perry and his mom’s toxicity. But it would have required more Skarsgard, and I’m not sure whether they could have gotten him for the whole season. Season 2 would have been better that way, although I’m not sure even that would have worked, in part because of a fundamental weakness in the ending of season 1. In the end, I’m not sure the show justified the characters’ need to lie in the end of S1 about how Perry died. If they had told the truth—that Perry had attacked Celeste and when the others intervened to save her, in pushing him off of her he fell down the stairs—no detective and prosecutor in their right mind press charges.
Since her acting was so terrible in The Batman, who cares?
Sure, we’d all like to see Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley back onscreen together again…if the project wasn’t Big Little Lies season 3, because season 2 was bad and unnecessary.