‘Big Little Lies’ Star Alexander Skarsgard on Possible Return in Season 2: ‘I’m Very Dead’

Alexander Skarsgard’s presence at the Big Little Lies Season 2 red carpet premiere on Wednesday night could have been a big spoiler for the new episodes, but the actor insists his character is “very dead.”

“I’m just here for the free alcohol and snacks,” Skarsgard told Variety when asked what he was doing there.
Skarsgard would not say if he was in any flashbacks, telling the outlet, “I’m very dead… unless I come back as a zombie. He was pretty badly impaled. I’m afraid he did not survive that.”

When reminded there are always flashbacks in television, Skarsgard coyly replied, “So I’ve heard. Yeah… I don’t know, we’ll see.”

The True Blood actor also said he “approved” the decision to cast Meryl Streep as his mother in Season 2.

“I had casting approval, and I said, ‘Yeah, Meryl can play my mom,’” he joked. “That’s all right. She’ll do.”
Skarsgard said he had not seen the new episodes, but read them and said he is “very excited for people to see it. They way [Streep] comes in to the dynamic of the group, asking some hard questions. It creates a lot of tension. There’s great drama in that, so I’m excited to see it.”

During the first season, originally billed as a limited series, Skarsgard played Celeste Wright’s abusive husband Perry. In the end, Perry tries to get Celeste (Nicole Kidman) back at a party, but when she rejected him, he attacked her. Celeste’s friends tried to get him off her, but Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz) pushed him down the stairs, killing him. In Season 2, Perry’s mother Mary Louise Wright (Streep) will be arriving in Monterrey, in search for answers.

The series also stars Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Adam Scott, Laura Dern, James Tupper, Jeffrey Nordling, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Sokolovic and Crystal Fox. It is based on the novel by Liane Moriarty, who was initially apprehensive about expanding the world of her novel, which was covered in full during the first season.

“When I was sort of agonizing over whether or not I should do it, it was actually my sister who said to me, ‘Only do it if it would be fun, and why not create a role for your favorite actor?’ And that’s when I came up with this role for Meryl Streep, to be Perry’s mother,” Moriarty told The Hollywood Reporter. “And it was really from there that it all came together, because you bring this new character in and the storylines just emerge.”

Streep said yes to the project before even reading a script and recognized that the character’s name was her real legal name.

“I’m just amazed that she makes somebody who wasn’t real before becoming a reality,” Moriarty said of watching Streep act. “With her little gestures, there’s a person somehow. I hadn’t thought before about the craft of acting and how strong it really is.”

Big Little Lies premieres on Sunday, June 9 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. Like the first season, it only runs seven episodes.

Photo credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images