Kidman is set to team up with the creator of Big Little Lies, David E. Kelley, once again to bring Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers novel to life. This TV adaptation follows a similar premise as the book where a group of city residents visit a secluded wellness retreat — run by Kidman’s character — before they realize nothing is as they expected it to be.

Moriarty was initially intrigued to set her novel at a health retreat because she’s “sympathetic” about the concept of self-improvement, she explained via a November 2018 interview with The Guardian.

“We live in paradise,” the Truly Madly Guilty author said. “Most of us live such comfortable middle-class lives, and so, is it the desire for suffering? And this desire we all have for transformation. I can never see an article that says, ‘Just change this one thing about your life and you’ll be transformed forever’ – even though you know when you click on it, it won’t work, I find it irresistible.”

The Australian author later explained to NPR that she was “fascinated by the desire for wellness” in general, noting that while she believes in it, she also finds it a tad “ridiculous.”

The book stars protagonist Frances Welty, who is an Australian romance novelist with a declining career. By the age of 51, she’s been twice married and divorced, as well as recently recovering from an Internet love scam.

“She was a lot of fun to write,” Moriarty told NPR about the character while promoting the book ahead of its publication. The What Alice Forgot author noted that the character is not autobiographical in any way, but that she is “completely charming” in her own right. Melissa McCarthy brings the character to life in the limited series, playing one of the nine “perfect strangers.”

Within months of the novel’s release, Kidman’s production company, Blossom Films, closed a preemptive deal for the adaptation rights, Variety first reported at the time. She later gushed about her bond with the bestselling novelist.

“We’re all very close,” The Undoing star told Deadline in May 2019. “One of the strongest things that we value is, I suppose, the intimacy and the closeness of the relationships. I just think that reaps huge benefits when it goes far beyond just a working, business-like relationship. You’re dealing with art, but you’re also dealing with emotions, and it just has to be deeply personal for us.”

During the interview, the Big Little Lies alum dished that she read an early draft of the 2018 book and was quickly interested.

“For Nine Perfect Strangers, we were going to buy the book before we’d actually seen the book finished,” Kidman added at the time. “Partly that was because we trusted and knew the synopsis—we knew what [Moriarty] was going to do with it — but that was where we jumped in.”

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This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Miranda Siwak