Give Every Actress From The Hours Her Own TV Cult
It’s 2025. The dream of being a movie star who does only movies is long dead. The most you can hope for is being a movie star who has the ability to get a limited series a green light. So if you’re Academy Award–winning actress Nicole Kidman, you take your role as a job creator seriously and you sign up for a limited series in which you’re a mysterious blonde running a health-and-wellness operation that may be a cult. That show is called Nine Perfect Strangers; it’s generic and not exactly great, but you do get it renewed for a second season where you hang out in the snow. What if you’re Academy Award–winning actress Julianne Moore? Well, after people didn’t take your latest Todd Haynes masterwork seriously enough, maybe you sign up for a limited series in which you play a mysterious brunette who is running a beachside wellness operation that, yes, may also be a cult. That’s called Sirens; it just premiered on Netflix, and who’s to say if it’ll be a hit, but it sure feels like it will generate enough interest to be cannibalized into strange out-of-context snippets digested by gay men online.
In journalism, we often say it takes three instances of something to make a trend, but two data points into this sequence, I think we can all agree that we know where this is going. Say it with me: Every actress from the 2002 film The Hours should get her own more-than-slightly-trashy limited series in which they play a mysterious woman running what is probably a cult. Nicole Kidman did it. Julianne Moore did it. So I guess what I really mean is that Meryl Streep should star in a more-than-slightly-trashy limited series in which she plays a mysterious woman running what is probably a cult. (I’d be happy to accept limited series on the same premise with Toni Collette, Miranda Richardson, or Margo Martindale, but for now I’m focusing on the names billed above the title.) It’s both grim and darkly funny how the women in what is probably the ne plus ultra Oscar-bait drama — which many love but I personally have always found trite and forced — are now leading these fun nonsense TV dramas. For the sake of good joke structure, if not the health of the American entertainment industry, we need to complete the trilogy.
You may think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Streep should do any television that isn’t an acclaimed Mike Nichols adaptation of Angels in America, but I’m sorry to say this all feels very possible. Streep is already on television! Not leading shows, but she has been hanging out with Martin Short on Only Murders in the Building and threatening Kidman and Reese Witherspoon with a very confusing lawsuit in Big Little Lies. With a little cajoling — and a solid payday from, say, AppleTV+ — it’s easy to imagine Streep decamping to an expensive-looking seaside locale to put on a bad wig and pull off some good one-liners. As long as a probable cult is involved and she’s wearing flowy clothing in shades of off-white that I can screenshot and use for bad memes, I will be happy. I do, however, strongly believe this limited series should involve Streep threatening a rising star of the moment, and that rising star should be, specifically, Meghann Fahy. She did the cult show with Moore. She did another show with Kidman that is not about a cult but does involve murder and beaches. She has earned the right to have her sharpened porcelain jawline face off against Streep’s!
For the sake of consistency, and because of the IP-focused nature of contemporary Hollywood, our Streep show should also be an adaptation. Nine Perfect Strangers is based on a book, and Sirens is based on a play, so our hypothetical series will, of course, be based on a podcast because a podcast can truly be anything. Maybe it’s true crime, maybe it’s simply fiction. I don’t think anyone checks anymore. I polled my co-workers and they had have some good ideas, if anyone can lend me a podcast mic: a status reversal in which Streep is Fahy’s housekeeper (one who runs a cult, I guess); a series in which they both work for the newspaper of a small beachside community (where there is also a cult); a romantic drama inn which they become lovers (and there is also a cult); a remake of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that also stars Holland Taylor and Faye Marsay (and instead of a child that does not exist, there is a cult, which does). I will happily take a story-by and executive-producer credit on any of these projects if AppleTV+ or another premium streaming service would like to bring the idea to Meryl. I will be taking the money from that, leaving behind my career in blogging, and starting over in a small beachside community where I may or may not intend to found a cult.
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