Nine Perfect Strangers? Make that eight.
Emmy winner Melissa McCarthy will appear in an upcoming Hulu limited series of Liane Moriarty’s 2018 novel, according to Deadline. Emmy and Oscar winner Nicole Kidman will co-star. The showrunner will be David E. Kelley, who created the ongoing HBO TV-series adaptation of Moriarty’s 2014 bestseller Big Little Lies, which also co-stars Kidman.
The novel focuses on a group of nine people who attend a 10-day spa retreat at Tranquillium House, run by an enigmatic woman named Masha, whom Kidman will play in the adaptation. The characters include Frances Welty (McCarthy), a romance author and con-artist victim; an estranged, lottery-winning couple; a family mourning the death of a child; a divorcee and a divorce attorney; and a former professional athlete. As Kirkus’ reviewer noted, “As you can imagine, something fishy is going on, and while Moriarty displays her usual humor and Frances in particular is an appealing character, it's all a bit ridiculous.”
McCarthy was nominated for an Oscar for her role as the late biographer Lee Israel in the 2018 film of Israel’s 2008 memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me? She also starred in last year’s crime drama The Kitchen, which was based on a 2014-2015 DC Vertigo comic-book series.
Kidman won an Academy Award for playing Virginia Woolf in the 2002 film of Michael Cunningham’s 1998 novel, The Hours. More recently, she appeared in the 2018 movie adaptation of Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir, Boy Erased, and last year’s film version of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
