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Did You Know There Are Men on ‘Big Little Lies’?


We’re more than halfway through season two of Big Little Lies, and I have to ask: Who even are the men on this show? Did you know there were men on this show?

Last night the second annual Amabella’s birthday-party episode aired, and while I was struck by the glitz and glamour of the Monterey Five, dazzled by a Laura Dern monologue, and stunned by Nicole Kidman’s slapping Meryl Streep, I noticed something completely chilling: There are men on this show.

At first, I didn’t want to believe it. There I was sitting in my home, minding my own business, scrolling through Twitter while glancing at the TV to watch Zöe Kravitz dance like a tipsy mom at a block party, when it happened: I saw a tweet that read, “Marry, Fuck, Kill, Big Little Lies husband edition…go.” I thought, Husbands? And when I looked up at my television, I realized there was indeed a man on my screen. Yes, reader, a man on Big Little Lies.

This is actually a scene in Big Little Lies.HBO

I didn’t want it to be true, but I rewound, just to be sure, and there he was: that guy from Parks and Recreation who’s funny on Twitter, Adam Scott. He’s on Big Little Lies, a show that, until last night, I believed was about Academy Award–winning actresses staring into the sea. I considered this show a safe space, a place for women to talk about our patriarchy-induced traumas. A show that swept at the Emmys in 2017 for its layered and poignant illustrations of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Once I saw that men are allowed to be on Big Little Lies, I thought: But why? What for? What could any of these complex, beautiful female characters ever need from a man? It was like I was wearing lesbian goggles, and once I lifted them, I realized not one but all of the women on Big Little Lies are married to men—and not to each other. It was shocking.

Scott (the guy from Parks and Rec) plays Madeline’s husband. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a name; he’s the kind of husband I imagine straight women choose to be with because he’s barely even there in the first place, like furniture. He just fades into the background like a taupe chaise longue. This guy is sad because Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) had an affair with—get this—another man. He also has beef with Madeline’s ex-husband (a third man!) whose name is likely Joe or Bill, but who can be sure. Here I was thinking that Madeline was a single mother of two effervescent daughters, living a mystical life of a spritely sea witch in the cliffs of Northern California. I was so wrong. Had I just rubbed my eyes and squinted once, I would’ve noticed that this whole time there was male furniture in the background.



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Big Little Lies Is Having the Tough Conversations About Sexual Assault


Hearing that your dead son was a serial abuser is a lot for a mother to process; hopefully, after having some time, Mary Louise will be less reactive and defensive with Celeste. This scene made me think about a terrible experience of my own. In college, a man at a party asked me to stay and sleep with him, of which I refused. He followed me into the hallway, pinned me against the wall, and forced his hand inside me. When I escaped his grip, I walked home crying.

To this day, I’m still friendly with his sister, who often calls her brother her favorite person and holds him to the same high regards as Mary Louise holds Perry. I often wonder what my friend, the man’s sister, would say or think if I ever opened up to her about what happened with her brother. I know it wouldn’t be pretty, and I also know she wouldn’t believe me. Why believe someone you barely know over the person you grew up with and love with your whole heart? So, I was very affected by this particular scene.

Another gutting moment in Sunday’s episode transpired when Jane tells Ziggy about his real father, Perry. Like the twins, Ziggy also found out at school that his real father was Perry. When Jane confronts Ziggy about why he didn’t ask her about it, he says he figured she wouldn’t tell the truth. Ziggy then says he heard Jane was “salted.” Through tears, Jane tells him she thinks the word he heard was “assault,” and proceeds to open up about her experience.

Woodley told Vanity Fair that she didn’t consult experts about this scene, but rather went in somewhat unrehearsed to see what emotions poured out of her. “For me in that scene, it really was, how do you allow yourself to be in complete shock and be an adult in a situation where you yourself feel like a vulnerable child?” Talking to a child about rape isn’t something we often see on TV; Big Little Lies infused this scene with empathy, juxtaposing childlike innocence with adult trauma. Jane’s decision here is layered and realistic, and one that many survivors and mothers have had to make in their own lives, too.

HBO

Both Jane and Celeste’s admissions cause them trouble later in the episode. Mary Louise says she’s going to the police with what Celeste has told her, as it’s pertinent information that wasn’t disclosed during investigations. Jane’s confession puts her at odds with Celeste because they made a previous agreement not to tell their children the truth about Perry. Celeste’s twins ask their mother if Perry was a bad man, and she chooses the opposite path of Jane, saying that Perry made mistakes but was a good man. It’s another thorny issue: Jane was tired of lying to her son, which created distance between them. But Ziggy’s knowledge is a threat to Celeste’s sons, who could easily find out that their father was a rapist and abuser. That’s a lot for children to comprehend.



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Big Little Lies Fans Are Losing It Over This Renata Moment From the Season 2 Premiere


The return of HBO’s Big Little Lies is a gift to us all for many reasons: the drama, the music, the incredibly savage levels of shade, the real estate porn, and, yes, the memes.

Sunday night’s season two premiere offered up a spoil of riches for the Internet to latch onto, like Shailene Woodley dancing to Sufjan Stevens on the beach or every time Meryl Streep straight-up insulted Reese Witherspoon. But this week’s biggest meme moment goes to Laura Dern’s Renata and her incredible power woman photo shoot. Renata, of course, is a hardcore businesswoman, wife, and mother to Amabella—she of the bullying situation that kicked off the first season.

Everything about Renata’s photoshoot is glorious. As Renata sings along to Diana Ross’s “It’s My House,” she is fully embracing the badass within and lamenting about lesser shoots. “I’m so tired of those shots of women,” she says. “I mean, they’re in power right? They own banks, and they’re all, like, demure. Bullshit.”

Twitter took the moment and ran with it. “My queen bitch hath risen! #BigLittleLies,” one user wrote. “PSA: Laura Dern is a national treasure. #BigLittleLies,” another said.

“Me: Eh, I don’t know if #BigLittleLies needed another season that goes beyond the book,” someone tweeted. “Also me: This is the best show on television and I’d watch 200 episodes.”

“Renata is fierce and complicated and a nightmare, and also just wants a girlfriend and deserves to be seen because she’s lived in a man’s world her whole life,” Dern told The Guardian about Renata. “And what it takes for a woman in tech, a woman in banking, a woman in publishing—who you have to be and what you have to walk through to get the one seat in that boardroom of 13…”

It seems like she channeled all of that into the photoshoot scene, and we seriously cannot wait to see what she serves up next week.



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The Big Little Lies Cast Just Gave Us So Much Tea on Season 2


There is so much on the line going into Big Little Lies season two. If you somehow forgot, season one ended with—spoiler warning—Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz) killing Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) by pushing him down a flight of stairs, and the other Monterrey moms covering it up. So on top of all the problems these women were already dealing with, they’re now harboring a huge, life-changing secret.

And that secret is at the core of season two, which also stars the one and only Meryl Streep as Perry’s mother. The teasers for BLL suggest Streep’s character doesn’t buy the moms’ story that Perry accidentally slipped on those stairs. She’s looking for the truth—and I have a feeling she’s going to find it.

What that will mean for Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), Bonnie, Renata (Laura Dern), Jane (Shailene Woodley), and Celeste (Nicole Kidman) is still a mystery. In fact, there’s still so much about Big Little Lies season two that we don’t know. But we did get a few hints from the cast at BLL‘s season two premiere in New York City.

Here’s what they shared.

“We weren’t finished,” David E. Kelley, who wrote all the scripts, tells Glamour about the decision to do a season two. “We certainly dug into the abuse in year one, but the healing is something altogether different. So it really was unfinished. We were not going to do year two just because it was a commercial success. We wanted to be confident we could be just as emotionally provocative as we were in year one. I think we went deeper in year two.”

“She’s really sassy, and something happens that she gets in big trouble for doing,” Darby Camp, who plays Chloe, tells Glamour. “I’m actually excited to see more trouble that she gets into. She is still fighting with Madeline, and she’s still the sassy, same-old Chloe: troublemaker.”

“I think her mom is grounded and an Earth mother,” says Crystal Fox, who plays Elizabeth. “She’s probably coming in there to say, ‘Are you getting it together? What is going on? What are you doing?’ You know how moms can tell if you’re in a space, and they just wanna see what you’re gonna tell them? They just start watching you, and they know your behavior’s changed. And then they go, ‘OK, maybe you’ll tell me.’ And when you don’t, I’ll say, ‘What’s going on?'”

HBO

“It’s really worth it,” says Merrin Dungey, who plays Detective Adrienne Quinlan. “It’s an incredibly told story. I was surprised there was going to be a season two. The fact they upped the ante is incredible.”

“When you carry guilt, it can never be off your back entirely—whether it’s physicalized in another person hunting you or asking questions about it or if it’s just in your own heart,” Dungey adds.



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We All Agree Renata Is the Best Part of Big Little Lies, Right?


I love Renata Klein (Laura Dern) from Big Little Lies so much that I dressed up as her for Halloween in 2017. That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. When the time came around to pick a costume, only one person—or should I say legend—came to mind: Renata, Renata, Renata. Naturally, I pulled out all the stops for this look, bedazzling a T-shirt with sparkly gold letters to spell out “I SAID THANK YOU,” and even putting on an eye patch (to tribute the scene when Shailene Woodley’s character punches her, which I’m still not over.)

My Big Little Lies Renata costume. My two other friends went as Madeline and Celeste.

Like having a favorite Spice Girl or identifying with a specific woman on Sex and the City, everyone has a certain character on BLL whom they stan. Some love Madeline (Reese Witherspoon); others are obsessed with Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz); others feel for Celeste (Nicole Kidman); and when season two premieres on Sunday, June 9, a crop of fans will surely go hard for Meryl Streep’s character.

But all of these fandoms are incorrect. If I ask you who your favorite Big Little Lies character is and you say anything other than Renata Klein, then you’re just wrong. With her monochrome suits, biting one-liners and hair flips, Renata is a high-powered light in this dark, dark world. She’s Angelica’s mother from the Rugrats personified. Truly, she is. I’ve never been more jealous of a 7-year-old than I am of Amabella.

Laura Dern in Big Little Lies.
HBO



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Adam Scott talks Big Little Lies, Ghosted on Fox, and the nineties horror franchise he could never infiltrate


Before posing for this adorably pensive portrait (not pictured: standard issue New Balances), Adam Scott, 44, had never been photographed by a woman for a major magazine. Seriously. First, as part of Glamour‘s second-annual “Powered by Women” initiative, we fixed that. And then we called up the brainy funnyman for a tour of his beautiful mind. Turns out he’s dreamier than we could have ever imagined.

GLAMOUR: Ghosted, your new buddy comedy series with Craig Robinson, loves to put you in awkward situations. Why do you think you’re so comfortable playing the punch line?

ADAM SCOTT: I guess I’ve always felt kind of weird. I went through a long and fruitful overweight-awkward stage, and I got teased. I had a taste—well, more than a taste—I was kind of living in that space for a while. That’s the kind of thing that shapes you.

GLAMOUR: You and Craig have an unbelievable physical comedy dynamic. What’s it like to be the little dude in the little dude-big dude paradigm?

AS: Craig is such a sweet guy, but when you look at Craig and me from the outside, there couldn’t be two more different-looking people. The writers have fun trying to subvert that and play with it.

GLAMOUR: So do you toss all the “buff guy gets girl” scripts out the window?

AS: Oh, I gave up on trying to get those parts 20 years ago. I auditioned for every ­nineties flick, but it never happened for me. I think I auditioned for all the *Screams*, actually, and didn’t get any of them. And there are a lot of those movies.

GLAMOUR: Wait, you went out for Skeet Ulrich’s role in Scream?

AS: That must have been it. That had to be it. I think it was.

GLAMOUR: As someone who was 12 when Scream came out, this is a big reveal. It doesn’t matter, though, because you went on to play Amy Poehler’s love interest on five seasons of Parks and Recreation, which led to more than one fangirl listicle. Is it cool being a hipster-nerd sex icon now?

AS: When that stuff first started happening, I was hyperaware of it. But as it continued, I grew more and more weary of it. I can only imagine if I’d had any success when I was 19 or 20. That would have surely gone to my head.

GLAMOUR: What was it about Ed, Reese Witherspoon’s hopelessly devoted husband on Big Little Lies, that
made you want to play him?

AS: He genuinely loved Madeline. And he was determined to clear the way for her. He’s there to protect her and keep her safe, which makes him feel safe. They end up finding their way on the show, which is nice. But yeah, it obviously wasn’t the healthiest relationship.

GLAMOUR: I’ve got to ask: What exactly are you doing right now? It’s awfully noisy where you are.…

AS: I’ll tell you what I’m doing! I have to get to work, and I am the last one in the house, so I have to put the dog in the kitchen. Then we have this, like, smoothie delivery service, so I’m putting a bunch of them in the freezer for my wife. I am also trying to set the alarm so I can get out of here.

GLAMOUR: I always joke that men can’t multitask, but here you are, a renaissance man.

AS: Exactly. [Laughs.] Please put that in the article.

GLAMOUR: Of course! Okay, time for a truly loaded question: “Fuck, Marry, Kill” with Madeline McKinsey, Leslie Knope, and Party Down‘s Casey Klein.

AS: Oh, boy, that’s dangerous territory. Okay, so I think any sane person would marry Leslie Knope, right?

GLAMOUR: Absolutely.

AS: I feel like Casey Klein would just be heartbreak. And we saw what kinda trouble Madeline brings. I don’t want to kill any of them, though. The other two I am just going to leave up in the air and it could be, like, interchangeable.

Ghosted premieres on Fox October 1.



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