Any Nicole Kidman fan should bless Reese Witherspoon for calling Nicole Kidman and asking her if she wanted to produce and star in the adaptation of Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies. The resulting series helped the Australian (or Hawaiian, depending on how we judge the national identity of the actress who deceived us for decades) understand that television, in which she had cut her teeth in the 80s with Vietnam or Bangkok Hilton, could Be an ally in your career.
If in the cinema he received more and more proposals for supporting roles, in television he could produce tailor-made vehicles with dramatic protagonist characters. Then, asserting her name and her unquestionable status as a Hollywood star, he sold the project to the platforms. In the event that she was offered to participate in a project promoted by third parties, she could obtain the title of executive producer without problems.
This is how Nicole Kidman went from being an exceptional presence on television to becoming a constant: since 2017 she has worked on seven series. But which ones are a success for the Oscar winner for The Hours? Are there any that are a disaster? And what level of Nicolism do they offer? Here we order the works of her second television era from best to worst.
Jane (Shailene Woodley) settles with a secret and a mission in Monterey, one of the highest-income areas in California. At her son's school, she comes into contact with the most influential mothers such as Celeste (Nicole Kidman), Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) and Renata (Laura Dern). With David E. Kelley as screenwriter, eager to show that he could resurrect after being the King Midas of 90s television with Ally McBeal and The Lawyer, and the ill-fated Jean-Marc Vallée in direction, Kidman and Witherspoon showed up to what a point HBO needed an adult drama with a female perspective.
The first season of Big Little Lies, released in 2017 as a miniseries, was an example of dramatic perfection: when everyone involved, both in front of and behind the cameras, is at the disposal of a feminist story that dissected sexist violence, marriage, motherhood and sisterhood. Nicole Kidman, in fact, found in Big Little Lies one of the most complex roles of her career: the way in which she addresses (from vulnerability) fear, violence and desire due to an abusive husband serves to expose her as a pharaoh of interpretation. She is always up for a challenge, which is why there are so many Nicolics.
The second season with high school Meryl Streep had an impossible time maintaining the bar, in part due to the more intimate approach of director Andrea Arnold, without the nerve of Vallée, who tried to resolve the dissonance in the editing room. Be that as it may, those first seven episodes of Big Little Lies are heaven on earth, a drug for addicts and for any film or television lover who adores (literally) any actress in a state of grace.
Margaret (Nicole Kidman) is settled in Hong Kong by her husband. It would be an easy life if it weren't for the fact that the youngest of her three children disappeared without a trace and, despite her attempts to cope normally for the sake of those who are still here, unease dominates her. Also in this mural of expats is her neighbor Hilary (Sarayu Blue), who has marital problems, and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a post-college student with an existential crisis over a mistake she made.
Lulu Wang (The farewell) creates a drama set in a privileged environment that does not renounce the class perspective without focusing on this aspect of fiction. Her obsession is the dramas of three central characters with immaculate dramatic arcs, as well as the performances of the three actresses, with a fixation on nature in the urban environment, beauty and secondary social dynamics to hint at a larger mural .
Critics in the United States spoke of Expats as an interesting but failed series. But how can you talk in these terms about a series so well shot, so well acted and that takes the dramas of adult life so seriously, including an honest and heartbreaking focus on the loss linked to a disappearance?
The reader will have to excuse me. Nine Perfect Strangers is mediocrity made into series. Nicole Kidman joined forces in production with Melissa McCarthy to adapt another novel by Liane Moriarty, more insubstantial than Big Little Lies, with David E. Kelley as screenwriter. It begins when nine people are accepted into Tranquillum House, a spa with unusual treatments to help guests straighten out their lives.
Why is Nine Perfect Strangers ahead of any more successful proposal as a series? Because Kidman as Masha, the particular owner of the wellness center, is pharaonic, funny, disconcerting, taking over the ridiculous, showing that there are great performances in forgettable series.
Taylor Sheridan is one of the most prolific screenwriters in the United States. He created Yellowstone with Kevin Costner in 2018 and has since released 1883, 1932, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown or this series titled Special ops: Lioness. Joe (Zoe Saldaña) is a CIA agent who introduces a ruthless Marine (Laysla De Oliveira) as a spy in an Islamist terrorist cell.
It is an effective geopolitical thriller, without a single original idea, which features Nicole Kidman as a superior of Saldaña's character. Her presence is so secondary that she may leave the Nicolics halfway, but this does not prevent the star of Stanley Kubrick, Lars Von Trier or Baz Luhrmann from being an executive producer. She invoices but above all she controls.
When Jane Campion asked Nicole Kidman if she wanted to participate in the second season of Top of the Lake, it should not have crossed her mind to say no: Portrait of a Lady, the adaptation of Henry James that they made together in 1996 with John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey, is one of the key dramatic works in their filmography.
In the episodes, Elisabeth Moss's detective returned to Australia after having investigated a case that was as traumatic as it was personal in New Zealand. She came into contact with her biological daughter that she had given up for adoption and her mother, played by Kidman. The main drawback is that, despite Campion's strength and nuances, television is not a medium that the winner of the Oscar for best screenplay for The Piano and best direction for The Power of the Dog fully understands.
Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman) is a respected Manhattan psychiatrist who, when a school mother (Matilda De Angelis) is murdered, begins to suspect that her husband (Hugh Grant), a community-loved oncologist, might be the perpetrator. of crime. How much does she know you? And to what extent is her marriage based on lies?
The undoing is a catastrophic series. David E. Kelley, screenwriter again, does not understand what were the attractions of the best-seller by Jean Hanff Korelitz that he adapts, Susanne Bier builds a vaporous and suspicious atmosphere that also leads to nothing and, in this nothing of a thriller, Nicole Kidman She moves as lost as her character. Of course, at least she gave us wonderful memes with her great hair and a coat that seemed discarded from the Practically Magic wardrobe.
And finally, an anthology series about the female experience, which was sold as a black fable. Nicole Kidman, for example, plays in her episode a woman who eats photographs and, upon ingesting them, begins to live moments of those times. What a pity that having an original or eccentric idea is not a sufficient excuse to structure an episode around it. Furthermore, the Oscar winner for The Hours (and nominated for Moulin Rouge, Rabbit Hole, Lion and Being the Ricardos) only appears in one episode, the second. Why bother?
