On Wednesday, Meryl Streep gave us the best news we’ve heard yet in 2018: She’ll be starring in Big Little Lies Season 2 in a major role: Perry’s mom, Mary Louise. And now we have a little more clarity on how the iconic actress came to join the already star-studded cast. It turns out, her friend Nicole Kidman had something to do with it.

Kidman and Streep first starred together in The Hours in 2002 and they’ve been friends ever since. So when Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty dreamed of casting Streep in this new role, she recruited Kidman for some help.

“I was about half way through [writing] and I was talking to the producers and I said, I’ve got this role of Perry’s mother and … not quite believing my own audacity, I’d like Meryl to play this character,” Moriarty said in an interview with The Telegraph.

“And the producers were laughing at me because they were saying, ‘You’ve become so Hollywood,’ as in, picking up the phone and saying, ‘Get me Meryl,’” she said. “They were teasing me … but then they were saying, it’s not beyond the realm of possibilities because Nicole and Meryl are friends.”

Kidman pulled through, and the rest is history. “Nicole sent me an email saying, ‘Ask and you shall receive,’” Moriarty said.

The author also gave some more details about Streep’s role, and (spoiler alert!) she’s grieving the loss of her son Perry (played by Alexander Skarsgård). “She deeply loved her son … as much as any mother can love her son,” she said. “She had a slightly fraught relationship with her daughter-in-law, so it’s a very complicated, difficult time.”

Moriarty even named the character after Streep, who’s real name is Mary Louise. Big Little Lies Season 2, which won’t come out until at least 2019, will surely be worth the wait.