Liane Moriarty took a more hands-off approach to Big Little Lies Season 3 after learning that direct involvement in adaptations did not always suit her creative process.
The author wrote Big Little Truths, which became the foundation for the upcoming season. However, she chose not to work closely with HBO on adapting the new book for television.
Liane Moriarty explains why she stepped back from ‘Big Little Lies’ Season 3
Moriarty said she wanted the television team to take the finished manuscript and decide how to adapt it.
“I’m going to write this, but I don’t want to hear your thoughts, I’ll just give [the manuscript] to you and you can do what you want with it,” she recalled telling The Hollywood Reporter.
The decision came after her previous experience with Big Little Lies. Moriarty had written a roughly 50,000-word treatment for Season 2 because she struggled to outline story ideas without fully developing them.
She later decided she did not want to repeat that process.
“Definitely not. I would never do that again,” she said when asked whether she considered writing another television treatment instead of a sequel.
Moriarty also admitted that she sometimes regretted changes made during the adaptation process. She initially embraced collaboration because television required a different approach from novels.
However, disagreements sometimes left her wishing the series had followed her original work more closely.
“Well you should have just left it the same as the book because I worked this all out before,” she said of her reaction to certain adaptation issues.
Moriarty concluded that stepping away allowed her to experience future adaptations more like an ordinary viewer.
Big Little Truths returned to Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie 10 years after the first novel. The new story followed their families as their children reached high school. A severed finger and a mysterious new teacher drove the central mystery.
The book remained separate from the television continuity. Moriarty set the story on the fictional Pirriwee Peninsula, north of Sydney and followed details from her original novel rather than changes made for the HBO series.
She did, however, bring Mary Louise into the book. Moriarty originally created the character for Season 2, where Meryl Streep played her.
Moriarty had initially resisted writing any sequel at all, even after Reese Witherspoon asked about another story. Years later, she found a way to revisit the characters while keeping control of the novel itself.
For Season 3, she planned to leave the adaptation decisions to the television team.
