Shailene Woodley Recalls Laura Dern Call That Convinced Her To Do ‘Big Little Lies’: “Forever Changed My Life”

With the potential third season of Big Little Lies still up in the air, Shailene Woodley is reflecting on how it all started.

The 2x Golden Globe nominee recently gave an update on Season 3 as she recalled how “my sister,” co-star Laura Dern, convinced her to sign on to the HBO series adaptation of Liane Moriarty‘s book, which ran for two seasons from 2017 to 2019.

“I got a call, I’ll never forget it. It was November or October of 2015. I was really sick at the time and I was not at all exhausted by acting or the artistry and the craft of storytelling, but I was really exhausted by the act of Hollywood,” she told Vanity Fair. “And I got a call about Big Little Lies because Jean-Marc Vallée — our beautiful creator, director, who has since passed — had wanted me to play Jane. And I was desperate to work with him, I thought he was such an incredible artist and filmmaker. But I was really dead-set on ‘finding myself.'”

Woodley then got a call from Dern while she was in India. “And she just said, ‘Listen, I know where you’re at in your life. I’ve been there before too. It’s a lot. This world is an illusion, but what isn’t an illusion is what you love to do. And what I see in you, Shai, is your purpose — at least in this moment in your life — is to be a storyteller. And I think it’s a massive mistake for you to walk away from this opportunity that you really should lean into,'” she recalled.

“It was because of that call that I decided to leave India and come back to the United States, and it forever changed my life,” added Woodley. “And so, in so many ways, I’m grateful for Laura, but that was a massive moment of courageous friendship to say, ‘I think that you’re making a mistake and I’m gonna be brave enough to tell you why, cause I really see you and I see something you can’t see in your own life right now.'”

Co-star and executive producer Nicole Kidman previously teased a potential third season last year, on which Dern and Zoë Kravitz have also since commented.

“The beautiful thing about Big Little Lies is that we’re all actually friends in real life,” said Woodley. “We have a text chain going and it’s constantly a check-in, every few weeks, ‘Hey, what’s the update?’ ‘It’s still happening.’ I keep being told that there’s going to be a season 3, but I haven’t read anything yet.”

Adapted by David E. Kelley, Big Little Lies is a dark comedy that follows a group of moms (Woodley, Dern, Kidman, Kravitz and Reese Witherspoon) in the beachfront town of Monterey, California as they are bonded by murder. Vallée directed Season 1 before he died at age 58 in 2021. Andrea Arnold helmed Season 2.