Nicole Kidman To Star in ‘Perfect Nanny’ Series

NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: Kirkus Reviews (Michael Schaub).

Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny is headed to the small screen with Nicole Kidman set to star, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Slimani’s bestselling novel, published in the U.S. in 2018 with a translation by Sam Taylor, tells the story of a Paris couple who hire a nanny for their two children but soon learn that the woman has a dark side. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the novel, which won the Prix Goncourt literary prize, “The prose, despite Taylor’s often slapdash translation, manages to convey an atmosphere of creeping dread reminiscent of Modiano, but with more lurid details. The why of this horrific crime remains unfathomable, rendering it all the more frightening.”

In a 2018 interview with NPR, Slimani said she was inspired to write the novel after reading a French magazine article about a New York family murder.

“I began to [do] research about all the murders of children by nannies in France, in [the] United States, and I kind of do a mix between all those stories,” she said. “And I had the idea of this particular murder.”

Kidman will star in the HBO limited series along with Maya Erskine (Man Seeking Woman, PEN15). Erskine is writing the series, and she and Kidman are among the show’s executive producers.

Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.