Set in Nantucket, "The Perfect Couple" portrays a rarefied, 1% version of America where people have employees and use "summer" as a verb. That's precisely why director Susanne Bier turned down the offer to direct Netflix's adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand's novel when producer Gail Berman first approached her.

“It's not my world,” says Bier, the Danish director whose films “After the Wedding” and “In a Better World” were nominated for Oscars and who won an Emmy for directing for Tom Hiddleston's 2016 spy thriller “The Night Manager.”

Berman and screenwriter Jenna Lamia convinced Bier to change his mind. The show was a few months away from filming and had no cast yet, so the director wasted no time in reaching out to Nicole Kidman. They had worked together on the HBO miniseries "The Undoing," and now she offered her the role of the wealthy matriarch Greer Garrison Winbury. "She's a very busy lady, Nicole. But we had a lot of fun on 'The Undoing,'" Bier recalled.

Beer and I meet on a sunny summer morning in central London. She’s petite and stylish in an understated way (the viral phrase of the moment “very understated, very deliberate” certainly applies here), but her Scandinavian cool belies a determined disposition that thrives on challenge.