Reese Witherspoon Hints at New ‘Element’ for Big Little Lies Season 3, Promises Updates ‘Very Soon’.Linh

Reese Witherspoon wants fans to know that Big Little Lies season 3 is still in the works — and she’s teasing how the new installment could differ from the previous two seasons.

Witherspoon, 48, and Nicole Kidman have both been teasing that the beloved HBO series will be coming back more than five years after season 2 concluded — a conversation Kidman, 57, started accidentally last November — and Witherspoon is now sharing an update on where season 3 stands.

“Nicole and I have been waiting. We’re in waiting for Liane Moriarty,” Witherspoon told E! News on Oct. 5, referring to the author of the book on which the series was based. “She’s going to be turning in something very soon. We’re back to the original author and we’re going to go back to the original characters.”

Witherspoon also teased that the possibilities for the third season are “exciting,” as time will have passed for the Monterey Five — which is comprised of her character Madeline, Kidman’s Celeste, Shailene Woodley‘s Jane, Laura Dern‘s Renata and Zoë Kravitz‘s Bonnie.

“I think the kids are probably a little bit older now, so that might add another element,” Witherspoon said, referring to her character’s kids and her friends’ kids.

She clarified, though, that nothing is set in stone yet as they’re still waiting on the author. “I don’t know yet, I haven’t read it yet.”

One of the actors who played one of the Monterey Five’s kids, Iain Armitage, has already thrown his hat in the ring to return for the third season. He said on Live with Kelly and Mark in May that he had not “heard anything fully officially yet, but when such incredible, intelligent people as our leading ladies start talking, I think it’s pretty hard not to listen.”

“I’d be honored to be back,” Armitage, who played Woodley’s son Ziggy Chapman in seasons 1 and 2, said.

Since Kidman accidentally spilled that a season 3 was likely happening with an off-the-cuff comment at a fan event, Witherspoon later joked that her friend “went somewhere and said too much,” which led to her phone blowing up.

“Then I get the call, the ‘ring, ring,’ like, ‘Hey, is that happening?'” Witherspoon recalled in a Vanity Fair video with Kidman.

She said she had “Laura [Dern] calling me, and Zoë and Shailene. They’re all like, ‘Nic said that we’re making Big Little Lies 3.'”

In August, Kravitz, 35, told PEOPLE she’s waiting “like everybody else” with bated breath to get her hands on scripts for the new installment.

“I’m waiting to see, like everybody else, the third season that’s happening,” she said. “Waiting by the phone, waiting for the script to be done.”

She admitted she knows “nothing” about what’s to come, but she’s “excited to do it.”