The groom’s glamorous mother and acclaimed author of the Dolly Hardaway murder mystery novels. Her latest, Death in Dubai, is coming this summer. Hilderbrand, as the matriarch of her family, sees a little bit of herself in Greer. When the author found out Kidman was going to play Greer, she was screaming “because it’s Nicole Kidman, who is, in my opinion, the finest actress of our times,” she said.

When Bier starts a project, casting is always first for her. “If I have a really hard time casting it, I pull out of it. And this one, I had fun thinking about it,” she tells Tudum. After Kidman and Bier worked together on The Undoing, Kidman told her, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll be there.” So Kidman was Bier’s first casting call. “I called Nicole and said, ‘Would you be interested in playing somebody that we don’t necessarily like, but we can't help be fascinated by?’ ”

When Kidman joined, the actor also came on with her production company Blossom Films to produce. Kidman was drawn to Greer’s acerbic, mysterious, formidable, and hopeful personality. “She’s a mother bear,” Kidman said.

A Family Affair, Being the Ricardos, The Undoing

The dashing father of the groom, fans of Greer’s novels affectionately refer to him as the Dash to her Dolly, citing her lead characters. Greer and Tag are celebrating 30 years of wedded bliss.

Tag wasn’t immediately a character Schreiber thought he would play. “But Susanne and Nicole convinced me — well, they bullied me, to be honest,” he joked. “I’m glad they did, because it was a lot of fun.” Bier agrees, telling Tudum, Schreiber was “very reluctant. But he made it perfect. He made the character the way it needed to be.” 

She also adds that Tag’s singing in the series was all Schreiber’s invention, and not part of the script. “Then the music supervisors desperately were going, ‘We need the rights for that. Whenever you have anybody singing anything, we need the rights for it!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but I love it, so you better make sure we get the rights,’ ” says Bier.

To play Tag, Schreiber tapped into the “very WASP-y side” of his family. As patriarch, Tag carries the name as well as the legacy of the family. “In these sorts of families, [the patriarch] is a pivotal person,” said Schreiber.

Hilderbrand tells Tudum that when she was writing the novel in 2017, “I was heavy into my Ray Ray days” — referring to Schreiber’s lead role in Ray Donovan. “As I was writing Tag, I was like, ‘Oh my God, my wildest dream would be Liev playing this.’”

Ray Donovan, Asteroid City, Spotlight

Sister-in-law to the groom. Abby’s married to Thomas. The couple are about to welcome their first child together.

Fanning had previously worked with Bier on The First Lady, playing Susan Elizabeth Ford. The actor and director became quite close, so Fanning was dying to work with Bier again. “She is a person that I can confidently say [I would] do anything for, and I trust her implicitly as a director and as a person,” said Fanning. 

Fanning was also intrigued by Kidman’s casting in the series. “My sister [Elle] has [worked with her, in The Beguiled] and knows her, and so getting to kind of check that off of my list was something that I was really excited about.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Ripley, The Equalizer 3

Amelia is the bride, awaiting her big day when she’ll marry into the Winbury family. “She has the picture-perfect story laid out right in front of her, and yet she doesn’t feel entirely connected to it,” said Hewson.

As Hewson is around the same age as Amelia, she related to the dilemma Amelia finds herself in at the start of the series, where everyone around her is getting married, having kids, and buying houses. “She’s being forced into growing up really quickly and she’s not entirely sure of the choice that she’s making,” said Hewson. 

Bier describes Amelia as the character whom the audience identifies with the most. “She’s like a normal human being,” she says. “She’s also Eve Hewson, who is so beautiful, so sexy. She’s like Sophia Loren.”

In real life, Hewson and Fanning have been best friends for six or seven years, and she has stayed close with Jack Reynor (who plays her brother-in-law-to-be) since they filmed Flora and Son together. “I don’t know how this happened, but we all got cast together individually!” said Hewson. “I was thrilled because it was like we went to summer camp for three months in Cape Cod.”

Flora and Son, Bad Sisters, Behind Her Eyes

Benji is the polished groom who adores his bride-to-be. A little secret about the groom: He’s a talented painter in his spare time.

Before Bier reached out to Howle about the role, she had seen his body of work but never met him. On the call, she told him, “You seem to tear yourself apart in the roles that you play. How about you don’t do that for a while, and you could come and do this show and not do that?” recalled Howle. 

The actor saw playing Benji as a “chance to be more in touch with my funny bones, I guess,” he said. “And also be part of an ensemble and not have to tear myself apart.”

Under the Banner of Heaven, The Serpent, Outlaw King

Merritt is the bride’s best friend, maid of honor, and an influencer.

When Fahy read the script, she thought it was a show that she would want to watch. She originally auditioned for a different part than Merritt, and she describes her character as “fun, loving, and kind of sad.” She and Amelia are super different but are “the kind of friends that feel more like sisters,” she said. “I have a couple of those in my life, which is something that I feel really lucky to have.”

Hailing from Massachusetts, Fahy hadn’t read Hilderbrand’s novels before getting cast but was familiar “with the obsession that are her summer, vacation-y, East Coast beach vibe reads,” she said. “When I told my mom, especially, that I was going to be part of the one of the shows based off of a book of hers, she was freaking out.”

The White Lotus, The Bold Type, Political Animals

Best man and a childhood friend of Benji’s from boarding school, Shooter’s like an honorary member of the Winbury family.

Khatter was curious about his character’s mysterious, quietly intense, and dignified vibe since he received his audition script pages. Lamia’s writing helped him latch onto Shooter, who is “not a character that’s close to my personality or my real life in any way, really,” he said.

Shooter’s costumes and accessories also helped. “He wears his status down in a way. But if you’re looking closely, you’ll get a sense that he holds himself in high regard,” said Khatter.

Beyond the Clouds, A Suitable Boy, Pippa

The older brother of the groom, Jack knows how to work hard on Wall Street — and, of course, play hard for the right occasion.

Reynor saw Thomas Winbury as an opportunity to bring some levity and humor to the piece. He specifically chose not to read Hilderbrand’s novel, “because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with the character when I read the scripts,” he said.

To prepare for the shoot, Reynor looked back at some of the ’90s and ’00s dry, black comedy series he likes from the UK to try and capture some of the quality of sharp, improvised, sardonic humor. “When I got to set, I think everybody felt that I was a bit of an agitator because I was just throwing random shit at everybody every day, making up my own lines,” said Reynor. “That was fun and worked for the character, anyway.”

Midsommar, Flora and Son, The Peripheral, Sing Street

Chloe is the teenage daughter of the chief of police who works as a server for a local catering company. 

When Isaac auditioned for Chloe, there wasn’t much in the character breakdown. “All I knew was that she was an oyster girl working the event,” she said. To make herself look the part of a waiter, Isaac wore her dad’s white button up because she didn’t own any herself.

“When we did the full body shot, I tied the rest of the shirt behind my back and [when] I walked away, you could see the clump of shirt behind me!” she said. “But I had a lot of fun auditioning for it. And I booked it from the self-tape, which is surprising.”

Not Okay, Black Cake

Will is the youngest member of the Winbury family and the groom’s brother.

For Nivola, the most integral part of playing Will was tapping into his headspace of true entitlement. “Will has grown up thinking of himself as the most powerful person in any room because his family has so much influence and money,” said Nivola. Originally from Brooklyn, Nivola doesn’t feel super connected to the Nantucket regulars with whom his character summers.

But he did find ways to immerse himself. “My dad is from East Hampton originally, and so I've spent a lot of time out there and it's the same vibe. It's like that sailing, yacht clubs, all that shit,” he tells Tudum. So to prepare, he went out to Long Island and studied that ilk. He also read a book about the Nantucket upper crust and their “preppy” schools and fashion sense. 

The wardrobe also proved very helpful for tapping into Hilderbrand’s Nantucket. “The costumes are so bad in the best way,” says Nivola. “That style is so not me, and I love it, because it let me do something that I’m so not used to with the salmon-colored board shorts. And it really places you there, [because] that is what the people of Nantucket wear.”

Maestro, White Noise, Eileen

Dan is the chief of police.

Beach hadn’t read The Perfect Couple before he was cast in the series — but his wife had and was a big fan. “When I told her I might be doing the project, she was overjoyed,” said Beach.

He was particularly excited that he would “basically be the Sherlock Holmes, if you will, of the cast trying to figure out who the murderer was along with the audience.”

While Carter and Detective Nikki Henry (Donna Lynne Champlin) are adversarial — at least at first — Beach tells Tudum that he and Champlin hit it off from the first day. “I definitely relied on her when it came to where the hell we were, because we shot [all the episodes] at the same time,” he says.

Mayor of Kingstown, DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Dead Boy Detectives

Nikki is the detective tasked with getting to the bottom of the apparent murder.

Also a member of the Susanne Bier alumni club, Champlin self-identifies as a “huge murder mystery fanatic,” she said, citing Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar radio pieces as some of her favorites. “I’m also that annoying person who when you’re watching a murder mystery, I’m always the one who’s like, ‘He did it. She did it.’ I’m rarely right.”

Champlin applied her investigative guessing skills when she read Hildebrand’s The Perfect Couple. “I thought for sure about 10 different times that I knew who the murderer was. I was wrong every single time.”

As Champlin’s whole family is from Fall River, Massachusetts, filming the series 45 minutes away in Cape Cod felt like “getting the keys to the kingdom because my family always saw those beautiful homes from afar,” she tells Tudum. Her mother even came to visit the Summerland mansion. Detective Henry is also the only character not in Hilderbrand’s book, so she was able to build the character from scratch — including working with the dialect coach to give Henry a Fall River accent.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The First Lady, Feel the Beat

Isabel is a dear friend of the family, who’s traveling all the way from France just to attend the nuptials. So thoughtful!

Wingwomen, The Story of Adèle H., Possession