Shailene Woodley is just as excited about Meryl Streep joining Big Little Lies as viewers are. The actress, who plays Jane Chapman on HBO’s limited series, told Us Weekly that while she can’t say much about season 2, she has been filming with Streep.
“She’s fantastic. She’s as lovely as you would assume her to be,” Woodley, 26, told Us at an event for All It Takes on Saturday, April 28. “It’s bananas, working with Meryl.”
HBO announced in January that the 68-year-old actress had joined the Emmy Award-winning drama as Mary Louise Wright, the mother of Perry (Alexander Skarsgard). Mary arrives in town searching for answers about her son’s death and concerned for the well-being of her grandchildren. The first photo of Streep on set showed her with her on-screen grandsons and their mother, Celeste (Nicole Kidman).
In season 2, Jane will be still trying to process Perry’s death while figuring out how to build a new life for both herself and son Ziggy (Iain Armitage).
In real life, Woodley is using her fame to empower the youth, which is the reason she created the All It Takes organization with her mother. Speaking to Us, she revealed that the organization impacts every aspect of her life.
“No matter what character I ever embody, it’s always just a different shade of myself. So everything in life helps contribute to the characters I play, because without all the layers of my own inner awareness and my own inner mindfulness surrounding my psychology and how I operate, then I wouldn’t be able to play characters,” the actress told Us. “So hearing people’s stories, and working with the youth, and understanding why they feel lonely, or confused, or lost, or disassociated with those around them, only helps me relate to my own inner shadow of recognizing how I compartmentalize those things within myself, especially on a show like Big Little Lies.”
Big Little Lies season 2 is slated to premiere on HBO in 2019.
With reporting by Emily Marcus
