Nicole Kidman isn’t completely done with movies. Later this year, she will be seen getting it on with Harris Dickinson in A24’s Babygirl, but she certainly favors TV series these days. Lioness, A Perfect Couple, and Scarpetta are only a few of her currently running or in-development projects, and there might be a third Big Little Lies season coming, too. Those latter two projects, though? They will take awhile. She’s busy.
Speaking of limited series, more Nine Perfect Strangers is coming, but much sooner than any other Kidman series. This probably also came as a surprise to executive producer David E. Kelley after he predicted to USA Today that the series is “certainly not going to be everybody’s cup of tea.” Yet the psychedelic series was enough people’s tea to propel another season because Hulu’s streaming numbers practically demanded it. Really, filming is completed and everything, so let’s talk about what to expect.
Plot
Kidman previously worked with Kelley on both The Undoing and Big Little Lies, and together, they brought another Liane Moriarty work to life. Viewers will recall that Kidman’s wellness guru, Masha, ended up drugging her first-season resort guests that included characters portrayed by Bobby Cannavale, Michael Shannon, Samara Weaving, Melissa McCarthy, Regina Hal, and Melvin Gregg. These warm beverages laced with Psilocybin were supposedly for therapeutic purposes? Sure. And it sounds like Masha will be doing it again with Kidman suggesting to Deadline that there will be laced hot chocolate with a “crazy” sequel season that takes place in the Swiss Alps.
Although the first season finale was left ambiguous on Masha’s fate (she supposedly went free after her arrest and was seen with her dead daughter in a car), she’s clearly going to be doing her “wellness” thing again. Although Hulu hasn’t released a synopsis, and most new cast members have kept their lips zipped, Christine Baranski did tell Hollywood Reporter that the season filmed mostly in Munich with “some in the Austrian Alps”:
“It takes place in an old-world spa that was a sanitarium for famous artists. It’s landscape p*rn! We shot for six months, and it was all systems go as soon as the strike ended. Nicole owed a lot of work from another series, so she wasn’t available until weeks later, so we were shooting without her in January.”
As noted above, the first season’s ending left several character fates open-ended on whether what happened to them was “real” or fictional, given the framing of the book-inside-the-book by Melissa McCarthy’s character. Hulu hasn’t previewed whether the same structure will lead the second season, but hopefully, at least a synopsis will roll out soon.
Cast
Nicole Kidman surely has a ball as Masha. The second season cast will include Murray Bartlett (who will add some more The White Lotus flavor) along with Henry Golding, Christine Baranski, Annie Murphy, Dolly De Leon, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Lena Olin, Lucas Englander, Mark Strong, and Aras Aydin.
Release Date
This series debuted slightly before Kidman began picking up TV roles like candy. Renewal news (i.e., the end of the “limited series” label) arrived in 2023, and the second season will arrive sometime in 2025.
Trailer
A teaser trailer should surface soon with filming complete for months, but for the moment, here’s Nicole Kidman admitting that she went slightly method as Masha. Yikes.
