Poorna Jagannathan to work with Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman in HBO's Big Little Lies 

The HBO series Big Little Lies caused quite a stir when it aired last year. It has an enviable ensemble star cast of Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgård, Laura Dern, Jeffrey Nordling, Adam Scott, Zoë Kravitz, and James Tupper. It won five Primetime Emmy Awards including Outstanding Limited Series.

American actress Poorna Jagannathan, of Indian origin, will join the second season of the series along with Meryl Streep, Martin Donovan and Douglas Smith. She will play a new character, Katie Richmond, in the show that is currently filming in Sausalito, California.

Big Little Lies is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Australian author Liane Moriarity. The series follows the inner lives of the women of the tight-knit, wealthy community of Monterey, California. Every family is hiding a secret that could destroy their lives.

The popularity of the show amongst fans and the number of accolades it picked from critics and awards functions warranted for another season. HBO renewed Big Little Lies for a second season in December 2017. Filmmaker Andrea Arnold replaces season one director Jean-Marc Vallée; she will direct all the episodes. Executive producer David E Kelley will also write the screenplay. While the first season was based on Moriarity's book, the author has also contributed to the second season.

Jagannathan was last seen on the Netflix series Gypsy with Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup. Her performance as Safar Khan on the HBO mini-series. The Night Of, with Riz Ahmed, was critically lauded. In the domestic turf, she was seen in Abhinay Deo's Delhi Belly (2011) with Imran Khan and had a small part in Ayan Mukerji's Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) with Ranbir Kapoor.