Big Little Lies: How Each Character Is Supposed To Look

The HBO series Big Little Lies is based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty. In this novel adaptation, the series went off book, adding additional plot points such as Madeline’s affair, and introducing new characters. Most of these things can’t be helped as the series outlasted the storyline of the book.

But the heart of Big Little Lies is its characters. For those who didn’t read the book, the characters are as they appear with no interference of the imagination or guidance from the book description. But how were the characters supposed to look?

10 Tom The Barista

Tom’s physical description is a “youngish man,” with “curly blond surfer hair and a stud in the side of his nose.” He’s a friendly face who is always associated with warm pastries and good coffee.

Tom is admired by Jane in an “appreciative, aesthetic way,” such as the breadth of his shoulders in a standard black t-shirt and the fact that he is fit.

9 Abigail Carlson

Abigail is Madeline and Nathan’s daughter. Jane describes Abigail when she first meets her as having “Madeline’s brilliant smile,” but apart from that, nothing much else in common. “Abigail’s coloring was darker and her features were sharper.

Her head hung down her back in that ratty, just-got-out-of-bed look and she wore a shapeless, sack-like brown dress over black leggings. Intricate henna markings extended from her hands all the way up to her forearms. Her only jewelry was a silver skull hanging from a black shoelace around her neck.”

8 Nathan Carlson

Nathan Carlson is described as having grown out his thick grey hair in a style that is “flip-flopping about on his forehead as if he were a middle-aged Australian Hugh Grant.

” He looks “a good deal older,” than his wife Bonnie, dresses in “standard middle-aged dad gear,” and wears the “quintessential Good Daddy uniform” at the athletic carnival.

7 Bonnie Carlson

When Jane first meets Bonnie, she describes her as wearing “a full-length, paisley skirt, with a black singlet. Her wrists seemed to be adorned with twine and she wore her hair in one long single plait. There was a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on her shoulder.”

Bonnie is described through Madeline’s eyes as “smiling beatifically. She was always smiling beatifically.”

6 Renata Klein

Career woman and mother to Amabella, Renata Klein is described as a woman with a “crisp grey symmetrical haircut and intense brown eyes behind stylish black-framed spectacles.” When Jane first met Renata she felt like she was being “accosted by a politician.”

However, her appearance in the series has Renata portrayed by Laura Dern with blonde wavy hair and no glasses besides sunglasses.

5 Perry Wright

Celeste Wright is quoted in the book saying “women always took to Perry. It was that Tom Cruise white teeth smile and the way he gave them his full attention.” Perry Wright took the alias of Saxon Banks on the night he sexually assaulted Jane Chapman.

In a bar at a hotel in the city, Jane assumes him to be in his early thirties. An “older man” with a “chiseled chin,” and a “devastatingly attractive smile.”

4 Ed Mackenzie

Ed Mackenzie is a middle-aged man with a broad hairy chest he calls a “fine physique” as he displays it proudly while wearing his wetsuit. Although Madeline dislikes the “crumpling and creasing of her skin,” she loves how Ed aged as “the lines around his eyes deepened and his hair greyed.”

Ed is also described by Madeline as “almost completely bald,” while the series version of Ed has quite the head of hair.

3 Jane Chapman

In the novel, Jane’s mother takes Madeline aside and asks her to look out for her daughter, saying she has become “painfully thin,” while “she used to be quite voluptuous.” Jane has “brown hair scraped back painfully hard from the forehead,” and her make-up free skin is described as “naked and raw.”

Jane often wears plain and simple clothing such as a denim skirt and a white v-necked t-shirt. Before the events of the trivia night, Jane gets her hair cut in a short style.

2 Madeline Martha Mackenzie

Madeline is described through the perspective of Jane as a “glittery girl.” When introduced in the novel, Madeline is coming to terms with the fact that it’s her birthday and she is now a forty-year-old woman.

Glittery girls “weren’t necessarily the prettiest, but they decorated themselves so affectionately, like Christmas trees, with dangling earrings, jangling bangles and delicate, pointless scarves.” Madeline has “tanned, freckly skin,” with “shoulder-length, well-cut dark hair, and the faintest sprinkle of freckles across her nose.”

1 Celeste Wright

Throughout the novel, Celeste is constantly seen by others as someone of natural beauty. She is tall, has “long red-gold hair” and is “unacceptable, hurtfully beautiful.” Madeline and Jane both comment on the fact that Celeste doesn’t wear make-up.

People are quoted calling her a “beautiful mother,” “horribly beautiful” and  “impossibly gorgeous.” Celeste is brought to life in the series by Nicole Kidman.

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