Pretty woman — the actress, not the movie — is making her transition to television as Julia Roberts, recognizing the quality of the medium, is planning to star in her first limited series.
Based on Maria Semple's novel, Today Will Be Different has cast the Academy Award winner as Eleanor Flood, mother and wife who has planned out the perfect day but stands by helplessly as nothing goes as intended, including a son who has stayed home from school pretending to be sick, a husband who's decided to take a vacation without telling her, and a secret from the family's past that threatens to be exposed. The show, which Roberts will also produce, takes place over the course of a single day.
In an interview with NPR, Semple described her intent with the character of Eleanor by noting she wanted to explore a state that many middle-age marriages find themselves in. Referring to the book's title, she explains, "I could say that today is the day where she realizes a lot of things. And one of the things she realizes is that her marriage is on auto-pilot...so this is a book to me about the decision to dig in and to try to, as Eleanor says, not mistake love for youth. You know, that when you're young you're just crazy about each other and now you have to work a little harder at it."
Roberts isn't the only big screen actress paying a visit to the small, as Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern are starring in HBO's limited series Big Little Lies, which premieres 19 February, 2017.