How Liane Moriarty keeps it real

Since her novel Big Little Lies was picked up Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon back in 2014, and turned into the award-winning HBO series of the same name, there’s an expectation the books will have that Hollywood touch.

“There is that aspect to it all now,” she says, “but I have to deal with it otherwise you could become frozen and not write another word.

“I think I felt the pressure more with [the next book] Truly Madly Guilty. With this one I felt quite free and I just enjoyed myself, I just let it all go.”

And that’s part of her charm, and her appeal as an author, despite the A-list contacts in her phone, she’s remained endearingly down to earth and self-deprecating.

Indeed the idea for her latest novel, Nine Perfect Strangers - and yes, Kidman’s snaffled this one too - came because, while doing publicity for Big Little Lies, she couldn’t really think of a good story to tell people about what her next book would be.

“I kept making the same joke about how it would be set on a tropical island resort and I would have to go and do lots of research laying next to the pool drinking cocktails,” she says. “And then one day I went why not … that might actually work.”

But then she went to an ill-fated barbecue, which became Truly Madly Guilty, and the resort idea was put on hold.

When it did start bubbling up again, the tropical resort had morphed into a health retreat, Tranquillum House, run by the formidable Masha. Nine strangers, none of them perfect, sign up for a 10-day retreat and have no idea what’s in store. Neither does the reader, which is a Moriarty trait, and there’s enough twists and turns to keep you intrigued.

One of the main characters is Frances Welty, a romance novelist stung by an online scammer, a little frumpy and out of sorts.

Internet gossip says this is the character Kidman will play, but Moriarty and I agree she could only be Masha.

“When we were talking about it I remember Nicole correcting my very Australian pronunciation of Masha in a perfect Russian accent and I knew then who she would be.”

I suggest Kidman could channel the character she played in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled (and that will give you some hint about the twists in this book), and Moriarty likes that. And we ramble on for a bit discussing our favourite films. She’s a bit like that, a smart, funny suburban mum, one you’d feel blessed to stumble across at the school gate.

How does she take it all in her stride?

“Hollywood is a very small part of my life,” she says.

“I did go the premiere of Big Little Lies and I went to the Emmys and I visited the set but my life is still very much a writer’s life.

“I’m still just sitting at my desk for most of the day, most of the time.”

She did write the script for season two of the series, named a character Mary Louise in the off chance that Meryl Streep, whose real name is Mary Louise, might be interested. Such is her pulling power, Streep will play Kidman’s mother-in-law in the next instalment, which is due to air in 2019.

Apparently Kidman sent Moriarty an email that read “Ask and you shall receive”.

Has she met Streep?

“There was a chance to meet her in person but I was on deadline with Nine Perfect Strangers and I just couldn’t work it,” she says.

Too busy for Streep? She laughs and admits she doesn’t think she would have handled it well anyway.

“I mean it’s Meryl, I think I would have been overcome and it all would have been too much.”

She enjoyed writing the script, saying there was a certain freedom to it, but when she’d finished she felt a bit melancholy because the end result wasn’t a book. She still enjoys the process of writing, the solitude, the development of character, working out what the twist will be, tucking away ideas as they happen in her everyday life.

“Everyone says that everytime I go to a school function, is this going to end up in murder?” she laughs.

Nine Perfect Strangers, by Liane Moriarty, Pan Macmillan, $32.99.