Given how painful it was to watch Big Little Lies' portrait of an abusive marriage gradually unfold, as Nicole Kidman's Celeste suffered at the hands of her volatile husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgard), it's no surprise that it was infinitely more painful to shoot. During The Hollywood Reporter's roundtable interview with six potential Drama Actress Emmy contenders, Kidman described the emotional toll filming those scenes took on her.
"I remember lying on the floor in the last episode, being in my underwear and having just been really thrown around," Kidman said, referring to the finale's horrifying opening scene. "I just lay on the floor. I couldn't get up. I didn't want to get up. And I remember Jean-Marc [Vallée, the show's director] coming over and putting a towel over me in between the takes... I just felt completely humiliated and devastated. And angry inside. I went home and I threw a rock through a glass door."
Kidman's co-star and co-producer Reese Witherspoon recalled getting a phone call from her that night: "She says, "I've just done the craziest thing." She got home from work and she had one of these horrible scenes and she goes, "I couldn't get into my hotel room so I threw a rock through the window...I don't do stuff like that.'" Kidman added that in retrospect, she was "holding all that rage" leftover from the scene.
Earlier this month, Kidman offered a couple of updates on the ever-fluctuating Big Little Lies season two situation, which now doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. But she and Witherspoon are reuniting to adapt another book by Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty, and if there's any justice in Hollywood, they'll also reunite at this year's Emmys.
