Author Liane Moriarty talks new books, Big Little Lies and Meryl Streep

It wasn’t too long ago that Aussie novelist Liane Moriarty was being hailed as “the most successful author you’ve never heard of”. But the HBO adaptation of her 2014 novel Big Little Lies put paid to that. With an all-star cast led by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, the series transported Moriarty’s characters from a fictional northern-beach Sydney suburb to Monterey, California, but the guts of the smart, dark and addictive tale remained the same, and everyone was talking about it.

It might be reasonable to expect that with season two in the pipeline and Moriarty’s eighth book for grown-ups, Nine Perfect Strangers, fresh on the shelves (Nicole Kidman has already picked up the TV and movie rights) she’d be living the high life, but Moriarty remains remarkably calm and good humoured about it all. “I was in my 40s before I experienced more than moderate success with my books, so I think I’m just too old and weary to lose my head,” she says.

“It might have been a different story if I’d written a smash-hit debut novel when I was 20.

‘‘I did lose my head trying to find the right dress to wear to the Emmys. That was very traumatic. I still have flashbacks.”

Although we’re dying for details, what happens next in the land of Big Little Lies is under wraps.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to say anything, except that I changed my book to suit the series,” Moriarty says. “So, some of the characters, for example Bonnie, have a different backstory than the one I gave them in the novel and, of course, I also created entirely new characters.”

What Moriarty can reveal is that the process for taking her story from page to screen has been different this time around.

“With season one, I basically just handed over the book and crossed my fingers, although I didn’t need to cross them too tightly, because I knew I was handing it over to brilliant people,” she says.

“With season two, I wrote a 50,000-word story – basically a novella – purely for the show. It was fun because I could focus on dialogue, rather than description, and I didn’t need to move my characters from room to room, which is always one of the most awkward things for an author to do. I wrote it all in present tense as if I was watching it on the screen.’’

Moriarty says she is still torn between glee and shock over the evolution of the project. For starters, an even more iconic name has joined the line-up for Big Little Lies round two.

“I had the audacious idea that Meryl Streep could play the role of Perry’s mum [played by Alexander Skarsgard]. I was trying to come up with a name for the character and I thought I would find out Meryl’s middle name. I discovered her real name was Mary-Louise, which was actually perfect for the character. When I told the producers that I’d created a character for Meryl, they were teasing me saying, ‘Look at you, Liane. How Hollywood of you.’

‘‘But somehow they made the dream come true. They got me Meryl.’’

Liane Moriarty \ Talks about suburban underbelly satire for The Wheeler Centre on September 21.

https://www.wheelercentre.com