The Monterey 5 are back for Big Little Lies Season 2, and Meryl Streep can't handle the truth. She plays new character Mary Louise Wright, mother of Alexander Skarsgård's Perry Wright, and mother-in-law of Nicole Kidman's Celeste Wright. Perry died in Season 1, but he didn't accidentally die. Mom may have her suspicions, but she doesn't know the truth. Yet. The Monterey 5, as they are called, are all complicit in what happened and they will do whatever it takes to lie their way around it.
HBO just revealed the official Big Little Lies Season 2 teaser, which announced the premiere date as Sunday, June 9:
So much screaming! It's a good thing the HBO teaser trailer just showed but didn't give audio to all of those screams or your eardrums might not survive to watch the new season.
There's clearly a lot of fear and tension in the group, which includes Reese Witherspoon as Madeline Martha Mackenzie, Shailene Woodley as Jane Chapman, Zoë Kravitz as Bonnie Carlson, and Laura Dern as Renata Klein, in addition to Nicole Kidman as Celeste.
I love the scene with Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon, as Meryl's Mary Louise Wright gently interrogates Madeline on what happened to her son:
I want to know what happened that night. I’m very tempted to ask you, but I… I don’t think I would get the truth, would I?
Gasp! But ... she's right.
Writer/producer David E. Kelley said Season 2 starts with the ladies seeming "very well put together, but then the fissures and fractures begin to emerge. Once the crevasses start to widen, it escalates pretty quickly."
Big Little Lies, based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, was initially expected to be a one-and-done limited series. But it was a big success, and a massive awards darling at the Emmys and the Golden Globes -- especially for Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard, and Laura Dern.
So maybe it wasn't too much of a surprise when the main stars all returned for Season 2, with several new additions even beyond Meryl Streep. Other newbies include Crystal Fox as Elizabeth Howard, Douglas Smith as Corey Brockfield, Mo McRae as Michael Perkins, Martin Donovan as Martin Howard, Poorna Jagannathan as Katie Richmond, and Denis O'Hare as Ira Farber.
At the TCAs winter press tour in February (via TVLine), David E. Kelley said Season 1 "ended on a very open note" that led naturally to Season 2. However, he said there were no plans for Season 3:
We like where our closure is at the end of Season 2. That will probably be it.
However, as Reese Witherspoon pointed out, that's what they said last time too. Nicole Kidman previously sounded open to the idea of Season 3.
HBO shared the Big Little Lies Season 2 trailer a few hours before Game of Thrones Season 8's premiere. That final season will last for six episodes. So there will be a couple of Sunday nights in between Game of Thrones' ending and Big Little Lies' return.
Big Little Lies Season 2 has seven episodes, and they start airing Sunday, June 9 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO; this is just one of the many shows ready to entertain us on TV this summer.
