Big Little Lies season 2: Why is it happening at HBO?
Yet, here is the funny thing. As it turns out, Big Little Lies season 2 almost didn’t happen. There were plenty of reasons why it could and probably should have been avoided. What’s the primary one? It goes a little like this — Big Little Lies was envisioned to be a limited series. This was not meant to be something that lasted an extremely long period of time, and it was really just all about trying to find a way to tell an excellent story that had a defined beginning, middle, and end. Also, the show Mostly exhausted the source material from Liane Moriarty in season 1.
So why come back and do a season 2 after all of this? It really just comes down to finding the right story and making sure all the right people were properly involved. That makes some of the difficulties worthwhile, including bucking the trend that limited series don’t often live up to their billing if they come back for a second season. It feels like we’ve seen plenty of examples of this over the years and you just have to pretend on the other side that the second go-around didn’t happen.
In speaking on the decision-making behind Big Little Lies Season 2, show executive producer David E. Kelly had the following to say in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter:
“In terms of year two, the cast and producers, we didn’t want to come back unless we thought we had a legitimate shot of measuring up to the bar that we all set for ourselves … Liane Moriarty wrote a novella with some terrific ideas — the best and the brightest being introducing Perry’s mother, and we were lucky enough to get Meryl Streep … We were all daunted and a little bit reluctant to take on year two, because we didn’t want to do it just to do it. But we got excited about the stories and the material and realized there were places to go.”
We certainly get every single thing that he is saying here, mostly because if you have a star like Meryl Streep who wants to be a part of your show, how in the world do you say no to that? We know that Big Little Lies brings in good ratings, but that’s not why it’s coming back. HBO doesn’t need big ratings, given that they are currently swimming in 20 feet-deep Game of Thrones money. They must have just felt confident that this story was going to deliver, and based on early reviews, it does seem as though most people are happy with what they’re getting this time around. Even if Big Little Lies season 2 only ends up capturing 80% of the magic of the original, that’s going to make this well worth the cost of getting it off the ground.
As for a season 3 … it’s probably a little early to go crazy with that.
For more on Big Little Lies season 2…
Check out a new Shailene Woodley interview over at the link here!
Are you excited to see Big Little Lies season 2 when it comes on HBO? Be sure to share in the comments. (Photo: HBO.)
This article was written by Jessica Carter and you can follow her on Twitter here.