Reese Witherspoon is a great actor. That is not a secret in Hollywood and beyond—she won an Oscar after all—it's simply a fact.
Lately, Witherspoon has spent a majority of her time doing television shows like Big Little Lies and The Morning Show. Her most recent series, the Hulu miniseries adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere, wrapped up its eight-episode run on Wednesday, April 22 and in the episode, Witherspoon proves once again how great of an actor she is.
In Little Fires Everywhere, Witherspoon played Elena Richardson, a local newspaper reporter and high-strung mom of four kids. Elena fit the mold of many of Witherspoon's past characters. She was uptight, obsessed with crafting a picture-perfect world for all to see. Elena was very Type A, and proud of it.
However, the façade began to crack when Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) came into her orbit. Warning, spoilers ahead!
Mia and Elena clashed and cracked the precious veneers they both presented to the outside world. It all culminated when Elena's daughter, Izzy attempting to start fire to the family home, arguing with her mother, running away and then Elena's three other kids pleading with her mother to go after Izzy…and then setting fire to the house with little fires everywhere. Before they lit the blaze, Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn), had a confrontation with Elena where she came clean about her abortion, about using Pearl's name and using Pearl's story for her Yale admissions essay.
Just when viewers had accepted Elena as another shade of the characters Witherspoon has become known for, Witherspoon pulled out all the stops and likely clinched herself an Emmy nomination.
"I tried, I mean I really tried to tell you everything. There's all of this pressure to be all of these things, to be f—king perfect, but I'm not. I'm not f—king perfect," Lexie said.
Elena responded with a haunting, guttural scream of, "Yes you are!"
"We had a lot of conversations about it, like more conversations than I've ever had about any scene I've ever done in any project ever in my whole life. [Laughs.] We just set this character up in a way that it was necessary. It had to all culminate into something. It was us looking at the whole piece and going, ‘What would motivate these children to do something so outrageous?' I think when you think your mother has lost control or you finally see that part of your mother that is very human and almost monstrous, to use Mia's word, the children act out in a way because of it. It was really about taking all of the pieces that we wanted to get to and try and get there," Witherspoon told EW. "And I just kind of lost control. [Laughs.] Which happens sometimes on sets. I remember having to turn to the children and going, ‘Are you okay?'"
"For us the show has always been so much about being a mother but also about having a mother, trying to find your place with your mother, and I think both of these moms are fighting for so much control at the start of this show and the only way to get to the ending is for them to lose their illusion of control over their children and over their lives," Washington said. "It happens in very different ways obviously, but both of them have their idea of control ripped out from under them."
The eight-episode series is now streaming on Hulu.