SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Nine Perfect Strangers,” now streaming on Hulu.
The guests who attended Masha Dmitrichenko’s (Nicole Kidman) healing retreat in the Austrian Alps for Season 2 of Hulu’s “Nine Perfect Strangers” checked out after July 2 season finale having faced up to their respective traumas — with the help of some unconventional sessions frequently involving Masha’s special blend of psychedelic drugs.
To run down where the various characters ended up in the finale, troubled couple Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) and Tina (King Princess) split, but Tina regained her desire to play piano; disgraced former children’s TV host Brian (Murray Bartlett) said goodbye to the puppet that linked him to his past while finding a new BFF in compassionate former nun Agnes (Dolly de Leon); while Victoria (Christine Baranski) and daughter Imogen (Annie Murphy) mended fences and Imogen made future plans to meet up with wealthy Peter (Henry Golding) in the future.
However, the relationship between Masha and billionaire David Sharpe (Mark Strong) ended in a more combative place. As Kidman told Variety, “It’s like it’s only just beginning.” Earlier in the season, Masha had informed David that her dead daughter Tatiana was also his child from their tryst years earlier, and this confession helps her heal from the loss. But that wasn’t Masha’s only bombshell since she explains to the guests that David was brought to the retreat to also face all of them. “It’s a fascinating premise that Masha has arranged this group of people knowing that all of them, as you find out in the final episode, have been affected by this guy,” Strong says.
As a form of penance for wronging them, David tells the group that his company will get out of the weapons production business, but Masha finds out he’s lying. Getting the last laugh, she releases a very public A.I.-produced video in which David publicly states that his company will be doing just that, setting up a fun final scene — in a McDonald’s, no less — to wrap up the season.
Here, Kidman and Strong talk about that last scene in a certain golden-arched fast-food restaurant, the chances for a Season 3 and just how far they’ll go for their art when walking in snow and plunging into ice water is involved.
Variety: My most important question, were you in a real McDonald’s in the season’s final scene?
Nicole Kidman: Yeah, we absolutely were. Just outside of Berlin.
Nicole, you were drinking through a straw from a McDonald’s cup in the scene. Was it an actual McDonald’s milkshake?
Kidman: Yeah, chocolate.
Mark Strong: Come lunchtime, everybody just tucked into the McDonald’s. It’s on a kind of estate outside of Berlin, like a drive pass near a motorway. There was nothing around, really. It’s a strange location in the middle of nowhere, but apparently, it’s a very successful McDonald’s.
Kidman: But isn’t that great that we can say that we actually were there?
Yes! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, how was it working remotely on the show in the Austrian Alps? Were you up there the majority of the time?
Kidman: No, when you do an eight-part series, you’re moving back and forth and changing, because we were shooting chunks of each episode. It’s a huge scheduling thing, but we were lucky because we had our showrunner and director, Jonathan Levine, who just managed all of it and then Anthony Byrne, who was the other director. We only had two directors, and they are both very cinematic, which is great. We were moving around a lot, but we were definitely up in those Austrian Alps.
Mark, how was it for you to be filming up there?
Strong: It was great. I was definitely walking barefoot through the snow, it was beautiful. Everywhere you looked when you’re up in the mountains like that, 360 degrees, Austria is a beautiful country. It made the performance element just so easy, because it was breathtaking.
When the two of you do the ice plunge outside after walking through the show earlier in the season, was that the real deal?
Strong: Should we tell him?
Kidman: Part of the ice plunge is real, but the actual in the water was on a stage because I think we would have died.
Strong: It was as warm as a bath.
Kidman: Yeah, we would have, but it’s not even viable to shoot for half a day.
Strong: They wouldn’t allow you to do that anyway.
Kidman: There’s no way, but we would have done it because walking in the snow and walking up to it and everything, that was all real. We were barefoot in that snow, walking along, which I didn’t find too hard, which is so weird.
Strong: But I was lucky, because I was with you and you were like, “I’m going to walk in the snow for this length of time.” Because you’ve done it enough to know that if we just keep doing it and doing it, we were going to get frostbite.
Kidman: Then you lose your foot. So, we’ll do anything for art, but not that.
Mark, how did you go about building David’s relationship with his son, Peter, and building that with Henry over the season? Did you have time to really work on that?
Strong: That’s the crazy thing, you have to instantly bond with somebody and you have to create this history for yourselves immediately. I hadn’t met Henry before then, and now, I mean, we actually live quite near each other in London, so we’ve become really good friends. He’s such a lovely guy and such a good actor. We just got off to a flying start and it wasn’t difficult.
Kidman: And for Mark and I, we’ve worked together before [in 2014’s “Before I Go to Sleep”], so we already had this history and we were very at ease with each other, which was fantastic. That did make it much easier, didn’t it, Mark?
Strong: Absolutely. I was nervous that you would be worried because you’d have to be intimate with some guy, and I assumed because we worked together that you’d have to sort of say “OK” to who you’re going to end up filming with for Episode 5. I felt very, very honored.
Kidman: I don’t have that kind of control. I just think because we’d already worked together, you just immediately fall into each other. It’s bizarre, you have a rhythm if you get along and you’re able just to have that immediate ease so you don’t have to work for it. Sometimes, as you say, you’re thrown into it, and you don’t have that so then you really need the rehearsal. But because we already had that, that was something we could rely on.
Strong: It was very easy.
Nicole, Masha does seem to come to an emotional conclusion and truly accepts her daughter’s death, and maybe she’s done with this part of her grieving. Is that how you played it?
Kidman: Yes, and also, Masha choosing to have David come was very intentional. There was a reason for the whole trajectory to the show, as you see in the way in which it plays out. There’s a cat and mouse to them, but they’re also intertwined forever because they had a child. And that was a part of closure for her, and being able to move forward.
Strong: It’s a fascinating premise that Masha has arranged this group of people knowing that all of them, as you find out in the final episode, have been affected by this guy who is also the guy that she has had a daughter with that he doesn’t know. It’s an incredible setup to bring everybody there, and to bring David there and to make the reveal that they have a daughter together. And to also have a drug that allows them to go back to the time to when they met, and then to have that ending where Masha tells everybody, “OK, this guy is the source of all your problems.”
Kidman: But, also, it’s wanting David to accept some sort of culpability but also be free and maybe have a better relationship with his son and have a better relationship with where he is. Masha is all about getting through something and becoming more connected, not about becoming less and not about punishment, but about change. She believes you can heal and change, but it’s gonna be painful.
Nicole, after Martin (Lucas Englander) tries to kill Masha in the finale, she still forgives him and doesn’t punish him at all. Do you think she would have done that a week earlier before all these events?
Kidman: It’s all about forgiveness. Masha is moving through trauma, moving through things. Her heart is in the right place. She’s got her own problems but she’s always trying to grow, learn, expand and help people. She’s not about trying to destroy. She wants people to expand their horizons in terms of their emotional landscape, their healing landscape. But she’s still human. She’s not a God, so she has the human foibles.
All the guests get some sort of happy ending of sorts. Was that always the plan?
Kidman: Yes, and that’s what happened in the first season, as well. There’s no wreaking havoc. There’s wreaking havoc during it. You’re gonna walk through fire, but on the other side, we’ll see where we end up.
Mark, did you play David as someone who wants to change but maybe doesn’t know how? At one point in the finale, he says he has changed, but I didn’t really believe him.
Strong: He’s very arrogant and very confident at the beginning. He doesn’t feel there’s anything that he’s got to learn here and there’s nothing that Masha can teach him. He’s perfectly happy with who he is and, obviously, his journey is that he learns a lot about himself, his relationship with his son and his relationship to Masha, the fact that he’s a father. All of those things are massive revelations for him. And as Nic says, “It’s not an Agatha Christie story.” It’s not that she’s blaming him. The person that needs the most help is him. They’ve all come voluntarily knowing they have issues, but he’s turned up and he’s pretending that there’s no problem.
Kidman: And he has a crap relationship with his son, but the final scene is what I think is so interesting, because then it’s still game on. It’s ain’t over. It’s like it’s only just beginning — ‘til death do us part.
Is there a hope that Season 3 will come around so you two can play together some more?
Kidman: I mean, right now, we’re just getting this out there. This was such a juggernaut of a series to make and to launch and just to get it out there, you know? I only have the bandwidth to think of here and now, sorry to say.
If budgets and schedules weren’t a factor, where would you want to shoot Season 3?
Strong: I love the move from California to the Alps. That’s such a brilliant idea because you’re in a light, warm space, and then you’re going to everything the Alps has to offer. It can be gentle snow, but it can also be very spooky. I suppose I thought about this, and the only other places I could think of were the jungle, like Costa Rica or something like that, you know?
Kidman: Oh, wow. I love it. I’d love to be in the jungle!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
From Variety US.