Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Big Little Lies has been off HBO for almost a month, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Besides becoming a cultural smash — still inspiring thinkpieces and still pushing Liane Moriarty’s novel to the top of the bestseller lists – the show is going to be on the front lines of Emmy campaigns this summer. Both Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman are going to be gunning for gold in the hyper-competitive Best Actress race this year. But the two stars threw down more than just great performances in Big Little Lies — they deconstructed their own public images. You could even say the reason you can’t stop obsessing over their turns is because they’ve never been so completely brave or so utterly vulnerable onscreen.
When Big Little Lies premiered back in February, some critics didn’t quite get the meat of the drama. Big Little Lies is a show about surfaces and what’s churning underneath. So at first glance, Madeline Martha Mackenzie (Witherspoon) and Celeste Wright (Kidman) seem to be living in a tastefully-appointed dream. Both women are stay-at-home moms whose “homes” are more like palatial beach houses overlooking Monterey Bay. Their problems seem to be tied up in their kids schoolyard brawls or in the petty gossip of the upper crust. Madeline is a squeaky clean, squeaky wheel of a woman. She is the textbook definition of “Type A”: If things aren’t to her liking, she’s going to rush to fix them as swiftly as her high heels will let her. Celeste is a bit different. There’s something enigmatic about her too-perfect (because it’s a WIG!) strawberry blonde aesthetic. There’s something too beautiful about her Ken doll of a husband and something too precious about their tow-headed twin boys. You can’t put your finger on what is wrong because she is as serene as an empty tea cup locked away in the hutch.
Then, as the series unspools, we find that both women are hiding ugly secrets. In Madeline’s case, it’s a self-destructive streak sparked by jealousy and ennui. She is still fixated on her ex-husband’s happiness and has been nurturing an affair with the hot theater director who works at her behest. Celeste’s secret is far more horrifying. Her “adoring” Adonis of a husband, Perry (Alexander Skarsgard), is a menace. He is brutal, controlling, and abusive. Their happiness hinges on a seesaw of power plays that manifest themselves in physical fights that leave her bruised. Both actresses do something unique with these juicy parts: They graft their own public personas as celebrities onto their characters.
In Witherspoon’s case, she chose to lean hard into the worst parts of her own persona. Since arriving on the scene as a fresh-faced teen, Witherspoon has embodied the WASPish ideal. She’s blonde, she’s sharp, she looks good in tea dresses and linen shirts. She is picture perfect. Over the years, she subverted this image (as in Pleasantville), but she has always maintained a tightly-buttoned image. Heck, she even named her first production company “Type A,” as a nod to her aggressively anal and unapologetically ambitious personality. However, the more tightly wound something is, the more likely it is to explode. Witherspoon has also been caught drunkenly arguing with a police officer (and soberly yelling at paparazzi for their wreckless driving). So when we first encounter Madeline getting out of her own car to yell at some teens for their driving skills, it feels…accurate. Witherspoon digs deeper that that, though, in Big Little Lies and basically uses Madeline to excavate everything rank and dark dogging her soul.
Kidman does things a little bit differently. She doesn’t as much deconstruct her public persona as plumb its depths for flourishes to make Celeste’s pain seem all the more vibrant. The one technical flaw in Kidman’s performance is her American accent occasionally slips away. Aussie vowels spring out of her mouth, reminding us that, yes, she is acting. But these little trip ups also force Kidman’s own history into the frame. She was one of the first big Aussie actresses to make it in Hollywood. Back in the early ‘90s, she was Tom Cruise’s strawberry blonde bombshell. For a decade, the two of them were the reigning king and queen of Hollywood. He was the perfect man and she his perfect woman. Then, when they suddenly divorced, their union was mired in conspiracy theories and scandals surrounding Scientology. You have to wonder how much of that experience is grafted onto Celeste. The make up, the wig, the play-acting that everything is all right. How much of that is a Hollywood marriage?
Kidman’s getting a little bit more praise from fans for another reason: It’s been a long time since we’ve seen her operating at this level. She’s come off of a few years of flops — Grace of Monaco chief among them — and her best work seemed relegated to the past. This heart-wrenching and naked performance evoked Kidman’s biggest hits: To Die For, Moulin Rouge, The Hours, Rabbit Hole. Big Little Lies reminded us that Kidman is a force of nature before she is a “seal clapping meme.”
Indeed, Big Little Lies’s greatest gift to its audience was reminding us how good its cast was. Enough ink has been spilled bemoaning the dearth of great roles in film for actresses. Big Little Lies allowed an ensemble of incredibly talented women a chance to shine. Witherspoon and Kidman also used their parts as an opportunity to come face to face with themselves.
