Perry Wright

Perry Wright is the main antagonist of Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies and the HBO series based upon it. He is the abusive husband of one of the main characters, Celeste Wright, and is ultimately revealed to be a rapist who assaulted Celeste's friend Jane Chapman. He dies at the end of the first season, although his actions have consequeences that reach into the second season.

In the TV series, he is portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard.

Background
Neither the novel nor the TV series reveal much about Perry's life prior to the story, except that he had a brother who died when Perry was five. He and Celeste met in their mid-twenties and were immediately attracted to each other, beginning a long, tortured relationship in which both fed off each other's destructive personalities. Eventually, however, Perry became violent, beating her whenever she wounded his fragile ego with a (usually imagined) slight. Celeste refuses to leave him or go to the police because she is attracted to his violence, even as she knows it is wrong; his abusive outbursts frequently lead to sex.

Perry is a successful hedge fund manager, and affords himself and Celeste an iupper middle class lifestyle in in Monterrey, California. They have two sons, Max and Josh, whom Perry genuinely loves; the novel establishes that, despite his many other faults, he is a good father.

In Big Little Lies
When Jane Chapman moves to Monterrey with her young son Ziggy, she befriends Celeste and her neighbor Madeline, who also have children who go to the same school as Ziggy. Perry never meets them because he is frequently away on business, but is nevertheless jealous that Celeste has a life outside of him. When Perry finds out that Celeste skipped the school's orientation day to hang out with them, he hits her in the face. Later, when he believes that she is keeping him out of a family gathering, he chokes her

After this assault, Celeste decides to start seeing a therapist without Perry's knowledge. She eventually tells Perry and asks him to attend a session with her; he feigns contrition when the therapist presses him about his anger, but they both leave out the fact that he hits her. The therapist eventually figures it out and advises Celeste to leave Perry, and her resulting inner conflict serves to make Perry angrier and become increaisngly violent with her. Celeste finally makes up her mind to leave when she learns that Max had tried to choke a female classmate in imitation of his father.

Meanwhile, Jane becomes convinced that the man who raped her and fathered Ziggy is Perry's cousin, Saxon Banks. When she tracks him down, however, she does not recognize him and starts to doubt her memory of the assault. In a conversation witrh Celeste, however, she learns that Perry always used Saxon's name as a child whenever he did something he could be punished for, and she realizes that Perry is her rapist.

Soon afterward, Perry and Celeste attend a party for the school's parents in which the female attendess dress like Audrey Hepburn and the male attendees like Elvis Presley. On the way there, Celeste tells Perry she is leaving him, and they get into a violent argument. Jane interrupts to confront him about raping her, but Perry does not show remorse. He attacks both her and Celeste, but their mutrual friend Bonnie intercedes on their behalf and pushes him. Perry falls over backlwards down a flight of stairs to his death, breaking his neck and fracturing his skull.