The Iconic HBO Series With An A-List Cast

HBO consistently attracts top-tier acting talent, but the stars of Big Little Lies are on a whole other level. Based on the bestselling Liane Moriarty novel of the same name, Big Little Lies was always going to have an A-list cast, as Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman optioned the book’s screen rights less than a month after its publication in 2014.

The Big Little Lies adaptation was originally meant to be a movie, with Witherspoon and Kidman starring and executive producing. However, shortly into the development process, Big Little Lies morphed into a limited series with prolific TV writer and producer David E. Kelley billed as creator. From there, the series grew its cast of Oscar winners and buzzworthy actors.

Big Little Lies was a triumph for HBO, winning many awards, including Primetime Emmys for several cast members — with a slew of others nominated — and Outstanding Limited Series. With all this success, Big Little Lies season 2 was greenlit, turning the miniseries into a full-fledged TV show. In 2025, six years after the sophomore season, Big Little Lies season 3 was announced, proving the enduring appeal of the series and its cast.

Big Little Lies’ A-List Cast Made The Thriller Series Iconic

When Big Little Lies hit the airwaves, it had a ripple effect that is still seen in TV today. The HBO series premiered in 2017, when it was still the Golden Age of Television, with a cornucopia of prestige dramas for audiences to choose from. However, most of these acclaimed series, like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, were male-driven stories centered on a dark antihero protagonist.

Big Little Lies disrupted the status quo by being a prestige series not only with a predominantly female cast but also by centering on women’s issues, including motherhood, social image, abuse, and systemic misogyny. Series about these topics are often dismissed as trashy soap operas — and to some critics, Big Little Lies was just that — but the show’s starry cast made it impossible to ignore.

The 2010s saw a huge shift in what kind of actors were appearing on television. Gone were the days of distinct movie star and TV star camps, with the former enjoying a higher status. Instead, the decade featured many stars of the silver screen headlining high-quality series.

However, these shows often only featured one or two big-name stars in lead roles. Big Little Lies, on the other hand, had noteworthy actors playing leads and supporting characters alike. Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman played the two main characters, but Oscar winner Laura Dern, SAG and Golden Globe nominee Shailene Woodley, and rapidly rising star Zoë Kravitz also delivered incredible performances as the mothers who would become the Monterey Five.

Big Little Lies‘ male actors are just as strong, particularly Adam Scott and Alexander Skarsgård, as the respective husbands of Witherspoon and Kidman’s characters. Both roles could have been one-note and, particularly in the case of Skarsgård, cartoonish, but they bring depth and nuance to the series.

With Big Little Lies being about mothers, and a major bullying incident amongst their children at the heart of the series, this puts a lot of pressure on the show’s child actors to deliver quality performances. Fortunately, Big Little Lies‘ young stars were more than up to the challenge, with Iain Armitage’s Ziggy Chapman, the new kid and scapegoat, a particular standout.

Finally, though Big Little Lies season 2 is widely considered inferior to its predecessor, it still drew in arguably Hollywood’s biggest acting titan, Meryl Streep. She played Mary Louise Wright, the passive-aggressive mother to Skarsgård’s Perry, and was a perfect addition to the cast.

How The Big Little Lies Cast Disappears Into Their Performances

While Big Little Lies‘ famous cast certainly drew an audience, sometimes the presence of too many big-name actors can be distracting. However, with the cast performing fresh takes on the types of characters they’re known for, the caliber of acting is so strong that the celebrities of Big Little Lies morph into their roles right before our eyes.

Reese Witherspoon built her film career on playing plucky, ambitious women — Elle Woods being a prime example — and these traits can certainly be attributed to Madeline Mackenzie. However, Witherspoon plays Madeline with an edge that isn’t present in her other famous characters. For better or worse, Madeline is a woman driven by rage, and beneath her fiery exterior lies a harmful secret.

Much criticism has been levied against Nicole Kidman for playing the same character in too many TV shows — a rich woman with a terrible husband and a penchant for cozy sweaters, expensive wine, and staring at the ocean — but Big Little Lies is where that character was developed. She deservedly won an Emmy for her performance as Celeste Wright, a character more nuanced than she’s given credit for.

Alexander Skarsgård, who also won an Emmy for Big Little Lies, could teach a class on how to portray characters with charming menace, and never has that been on more disturbing display than in Big Little Lies. Perry Wright is a monster of a man who abuses his wife and has a sexually violent past. The show never excuses his behavior, but through Skarsgård’s performance, it’s easy to see why Celeste stayed with him for so long, complicating the age-old question, “Why doesn’t she just leave?”

Laura Dern is the final acting Emmy winner in Big Little Lies, and it’s clear that she’s having a blast as the antagonistic Renata Klein. It’s easy to hate Renata at first, for her superiority complex and her eagerness to scapegoat Ziggy as Amabella’s bully. However, when Big Little Lies peels back the curtain of Renata’s life, we see the impossible tightrope she has to walk as a high-powered executive and a mother, and Dern makes her even more sympathetic.

It would be easy to write entire articles about each individual Big Little Lies performance because they’re all so spectacular. The point is that the show isn’t just a roster of celebrities — the actors have the goods to back up their fame.

Who Will Be In Big Little Lies Season 3?

In the fall of 2025, when news of a confirmed Big Little Lies season 3 broke, the question on everyone’s minds was, “Which actors will come back?” Very little has been confirmed, but we can speculate on what we do know.

Unsurprisingly, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman will return, in both starring and executive producer capacities. Big Little Lies season 3 will also be an adaptation of Big Little Truths, a sequel novel by Liane Moriarty, which is due for publication later in 2026.

Moriarty revealed to USA Today that Big Little Truths will center on the events of Madeline’s 50th birthday party, and that the characters’ teenage children will be the Greek chorus after a severed finger is mailed to their principal’s office.

The story will take place 10 years after the events of the first book, with the main characters now the mothers of teenagers. This means that the Monterey Five are all likely to be in season 3, and, presumably, their husbands and children.

Though this isn’t much to go on, series creator David E. Kelley recently gave a big Big Little Lies season 3 update sure to excite fans. Kelley confirmed to USA Today that the new season “looks on track to start shooting in the fall.” So, while the cast isn’t yet confirmed, it looks like the audience will be returning to Monterey sooner rather than later.