Elisabeth Moss and Nicole Kidman Could Give SundanceTV Its Biggest Spotlight Yet

SundanceTV has been operating in the shadow of its sister network AMC, but a pair of Emmy nominees are about to change that. Elisabeth Moss and Nicole Kidman—who have already turned in two of the year’s finest TV performances in The Handmaid’s Tale and Big Little Lies, respectively—are doubling down on their stellar work with Top of the Lake: China Girl, a follow-up to the 2013 miniseries about Moss’ troubled detective. Top of the Lake will air on SundanceTV over three consecutive nights—Sunday, Sept. 10 through Tuesday, Sept. 12—giving the network its biggest spotlight ever just a week before both actresses are up for Emmy awards: Moss for best actress in a drama as Handmaid’s Offred; Kidman for best actress in a miniseries as Lies’ Celeste. In the follow-up, Moss' character Robin is investigating an unidentified Asian girl whose body washes up in a suitcase on Bondi Beach, while Kidman plays the adoptive mother of the daughter that Moss gave up after childbirth. Moss, who has been acting since she was a kid, told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour in L.A. that “I’ve had many years of being unemployed. … I have not gotten far more things than I have in my career. So just to be in a place where I know that I have a job, honestly, as an actor, that’s the Holy Grail.” She continued, “For me, the fact, that I get to continue doing what I love, what else could you ask for?” Kidman, like Moss, is enjoying her second meaty TV role this year, and is eager to continue to act in television. “The roles are here. The roles are in television. That’s really exciting,” she said. “Would I love to do more TV? Absolutely. Is it in the future? I don’t know.” [kickout id="1"] While she is known primarily for dramatic roles, Kidman said she would like to tackle more comedy. “At this stage in my life, I am so up for anything,” she said. “I’m willing to fall flat on my face. I know how to get back up again.’” Top of the Lake, which will also air on BBC Two, reunites Kidman with director Jane Campion, whom the actress has known she was 14. “I met her when I was a teenager. So she encountered me with all of my insecurities and my hopes and my desires,” said Kidman. “She really knows me, and I feel unbelievably safe. I’ve shared probably the deepest, most intimate secrets I have with her as a friend. So it’s just very freeing,” The miniseries, like Moss and Kidman’s earlier projects this year, boasts a largely female cast (co-stars include Game of Thrones' Gwendoline Christie), and continues the trend of meaty roles for women on TV. “There’s obviously still work to be done and it has to continue to be pushed in that direction," said Moss. “When you look at the landscape of television now and how much content is led by women and made by women, it’s exactly where we should be going, because that’s what the audience wants to see. And I think that all that’s happened is the people that hold the purse strings, the people who can give the money to do these projects, have finally started to realize that they make money and that people want to watch them.” Exhibit A: Wonder Woman, this summer’s biggest box office hit. And despite playing two emotionally draining characters in the same year, Moss couldn’t be in better spirits. “I love what I do so much. It’s what makes me happy,” said Moss. “I can’t wait to get back in there.” In her April cover story with Adweek, Moss told us that she urged Campion to take her character to an even darker place than in the first season. “The initial conversation I had with Jane about it was, if we’re going to do this again, let’s make it more challenging for me as an actor, let’s make it more complicated,” she said at the time. “Robin is in a very, very bad place, which is something I requested: that she be more fucked up than she was in the first season.”