Just last month, Laura Dern kept hopes for “Big Little Lies” Season 3 alive by telling Entertainment Tonight: “I mean, we would all love nothing more, we’re like family, just very lucky. I say, let’s hold out hope. Let’s keep asking, it might just come true.” Cast member Zoë Kravitz kept no such hope alive during a new video interview with GQ magazine. Kravitz announced “Big Little Lies” is over following the death of director and executive producer Jean-Marc Vallée.
“I don’t think it is,” Kravitz said when answering a fan question about the chances of “Big Little Lies” returning for Season 3. “We talked about doing a Season 3 a lot. Unfortunately, Jean-Marc Vallée, our incredible director, passed away this last year. It’s heartbreaking. I can’t imagine going on without him. He really was the visionary for that show. Unfortunately, it’s done.”
Vallée, the Quebecois director whose filmography also included “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Wild” (starring his “Big Little Lies” actors Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern), died in Dec. 2021 after suffering a heart attack in his cabin outside Quebec City, Canada. The filmmaker was only 58 years old at the time. Vallée directed all seven episodes of the original “Big Little Lies,” and he stayed involved creatively after Andrea Arnold took over directing duties for the show’s second season.
For his work on the first season of “Big Little Lies,” Vallée was awarded the Emmy for directing a limited series, movie or special. In between the two seasons of “Big Little Lies,” Vallée stayed with HBO to direct its Amy Adams-starring limited series “Sharp Objects.”
“Jean-Marc Vallée was a brilliant, fiercely dedicated filmmaker, a truly phenomenal talent who infused every scene with a deeply visceral, emotional truth,” HBO said in a statement following the director’s death. “He was also a hugely caring man who invested his whole self alongside every actor he directed.”
Many of the “Big Little Lies” cast used social media to tribute Vallée after his passing, with Laura Dern writing, “The world has lost one of our great and purest artists and dreamers. And we lost our beloved friend. Our hearts are broken.”
“It’s hard to imagine someone as vital, energetic and present as Jean-Marc being gone. I’m shattered,” Nicole Kidman added. “He was at the center of my creative universe and I can’t overstate his significance to me.
The first two seasons of “Big Little Lies” are now streaming on HBO Max.
