Shailene Woodley On Her 'Big Little Lies' Return And The "Joy" Of Working With Laura Dern

She also adds with a laugh: "There’s zero animosity between Laura and I. There't not even a hint of that, like, behind-the-veil, female curiosity, rage, jealousy, all the stuff that can happen between women, we have none of that. And so it was just a fun little boogie we got to jump into and explore all of those different colors together."

Sitting down with Brit + Co's Haley Sprankle, Woodley adds that she hopes all the Big Little Lies season 3 rumors are true. "I hear the same rumors and gossip that you hear," she reveals. "I hope it's true. It'd be very fun."

In Big Little Lies, Woodley also stars opposite Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and Zoë Kravitz, who she previously worked with on the Divergent film franchise. 2014's Divergent (and its two subsequent sequels) paired Woodley up with Kravitz, Theo James, Ansel Elgort (who was also in The Fault in Our Stars), and Miles Teller (who Woodley starred with in The Spectacular Now). And it's clear she loves seeing their present projects as much as she does looking back on their time together!

"Miles just did Top Gun, Zoë just wrote and directed her first film [Blink Twice], Theo was just in White Lotus," she says. "It’s really cool to see your friends and their passions and their crafts continue to expand."

And while her career evolves, Woodley continues to lean into her personal growth too: "I’m very open as a human. I love easy and I care easy, but I do not love lightly, and I do not care lightly."

"I give all of myself," she continues. "I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give. And now you cross me, I respectfully go, “Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.” Not interested."

Emotion, desire, and vulnerability are at the heart of Shailene Woodley's newest project, Three Women, which premieres on Starz September 13. Woodley (like all of us) has had a complicated relationship with the idea of growing up, and of figuring out what desire looks like for her. "I didn’t go through puberty till I was 15 and a half," she says. "I played with Barbies. Action figures were my jam. Didn’t have my first kiss until later in high school. But I also had this desire to be taken seriously on a film set."

As a young adult, she was impacted by "seeing friends in America who don’t get to fully be who they are because of sexual desire that’s unfulfilled. Even in the act of sex, there is a bridge to pleasure that has been stolen by the performative quality of what something is supposed to be, or by a lack of feeling safe with a partner, or a lack of feeling safe with ourselves. Life is too short for that."

"Maybe, just maybe,” she adds, “[Three Women] can inspire some other people out there to feel less alone and live a life that feels a little bit more truly pleasurable.”

Three Women premieres on Starz September 13 and stars Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise, Blair Underwood, Jason Ralph, Gabrielle Creevy, and Shailene Woodley. Watch our interviews with the cast on the Brit + Co YouTube page!