COMING ATTRACTIONS

Nine Perfect Strangers Trailer Invites You to Join Nicole Kidman’s Cult

Nicole Kidman clangin cymbals
Courtesy of Hulu

Leave it to Hollywood’s foremost overachievers, Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, to show up to Sunday night’s Oscars when they didn’t have to. The former acted as a presenter (and all-around fan of The Secret of NIMH), while the latter appeared virtually, in the trailer for her latest miniseries, Nine Perfect Strangers. Once again, it involves the novelist Liane Moriarty and TV writer David E. Kelley—both of whom you may also recognize from the hit HBO show Big Little Lies (Kidman and Kelley both also re-teamed on The Undoing).

Kidman was, of course, an unforgettable part of both hit series. But from the all of 30 seconds we’ve seen of her latest for Hulu, that was just the beginning. “I have been feeling rather unwell lately,” Melissa McCarthy, playing one of several recognizable victims, admits to Kidman’s Masha as a banana smoothie whirls. (Others featured in the series include Luke Evans, Michael Shannon, Regina Hall, Samira Weaving, Tiffany Boone, Grace Van Patten, and Bobby Cannavale.)

In no short order, they’re all lying prostrate in their own little makeshift graves. Kidman presides over them, as the head of a 10-day retreated at Tranquillum House—and a rather impassioned one at that. “Surrender yourself to me,” she appeals to them, peacefully clinking together a set of cymbals as she promises her recruits will be “transformed.”

Will that really be the case? Probably not, given the trio’s track record. We’ll find out for sure later this year.