Meanwhile, in Another World

How a Nicole Kidman–Hugh Grant drama series wound up becoming an inadvertent time capsule.

- By Mark Harris

NICOLE KIDMAN GETS it. She knows that you’re bored in month seven of the pandemic and that portion control can be challenging. She knows The Undoing— HBO’s six-part thriller set among Manhattan’s not always terribly sympathetic elites, which she produced and stars in— is the kind of TV dessert that is hard to stop eating after just one bite, especially given parts one through five all end with some form of a “What happens next?!” moment that will frustrate viewers who want fast answers. And, yes, she knows some of you may decide to solve this problem by letting the entire run of the show stack up before even taking a taste. “Well,” Kidman says, calling from Australia, “I do hear that people now don’t tune in until it’s all been released, because they’re like, ‘I don’t want to wait.’ I hope people don’t do that. I hope that they go, ‘Okay, I’ll dip my toe in and I’ll take the hour.’ One of the great benefits of doing television with a thriller is that you get to go, ‘No, you have to wait.’ Because the state of waiting is a good state to exist in, isn’t it?”