EXCLUSIVE: Nicole Kidman says she was smitten the second filmmaker and author Halina Reijn revealed the identify of a film she was writing. “I like the title. So, I used to be like, ‘Oh! I’d wish to be a Babygirl!’”
The Oscar-winner says that when she learn the script, she was “fully type of hypnotized” by its “very fashionable have a look at ladies’s sexuality, but additionally simply want and who we’re authentically as individuals and whether or not we’re liked for who we’re.”
Babygirl, which performs in theaters nationwide from Dec. 25, has been having that hypnotizing impact on competition and awards season audiences as properly, ever since A24 world-premiered Reijn’s image on the Venice Movie Pageant, the place Kidman’s red-hot blistering efficiency received the Lido’s Volpi Cup for Greatest Actress.
The movie does appear to have ignited some sense of “hearth and liberation” in individuals “which is what the movie’s about,” she explains.
Director Halina Reijn and Nicole Kidman on the set of Babygirl. (A24)
Within the film, Kidman disappears into the slender silhouette of Romy, the ground-breaking, high-powered CEO of a packaging firm that makes use of an AI system she designed.
Romy has all the things, or so it appears.
A husband named Jacob, who’s within the Phwoar class with a capital P – simple to tug off since he’s performed by Antonio Banderas; two teenage daughters; a splashy Manhattan condo; the compulsory home within the nation, and a wardrobe stuffed with energy coats, a type of attire that’s grow to be one thing of a signature costume for Kidman of late.
However the lady who “has all the things” doesn’t know tips on how to be her true self. She retains pushing the boundaries for “this progressive exploration” of sexual satisfaction. It’s a job that upends the normal dynamic the place a person often dictates the narrative, particularly in a film of this style.
Into this combine comes Samuel, performed with a smouldering depth by Harris Dickinson (Blitz, Triangle of Disappointment), an intern who chooses Romy, “the older lady,” to mentor him.
They quickly grow to be the item of one another’s want they usually maintain little or no again.
Each Banderas and Dickinson “help the trajectory of the lady” and that’s as uncommon as hen’s tooth.
“However they’re actually nice roles too. I feel the movie wouldn’t be the movie it’s with out these two males. Having Antonio as my husband, and he’s so interesting,” Kidman says with amusing.
“That’s why it’s not true by way of, ‘Okay, now this horrible husband.’ He’s a beautiful husband, a scrumptious husband,” she says, exhaling.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in Babygirl (2024).
Niko Tavernise/A24/Courtesy Everett Assortment
“After which there’s this extraordinary Harris, who simply type of seems as Samuel, and a few individuals have mentioned, ‘Effectively, perhaps it’s a dream, the entire movie. Perhaps it’s all a fantasy.’ Which I believed was attention-grabbing. And it’s actually up for interpretation,” she teases.
Reijn, a Dutch-born actress turned filmmaker, producer and author, is “obsessed,” as Kidman says, with the erotic thriller style that flooded into theaters within the Eighties and ’90s. Films like Deadly Attraction, Fundamental Intuition, Physique Warmth, Physique Double, Crimes of Ardour and so forth.
“And people movies, they have been entertaining, I imply, all of us went and noticed them … however, maintain on! The place’s the story that follows the opposite factor?” she wonders.
“Halina’s obsessive about these movies,” says Kidman. “And so, she has at all times had the concept of doing a thriller from that style and making it with the feminine gaze. It’s these tales however advised by means of a feminine gaze. And that’s what she was decided to do. Whether or not anybody would’ve given her the cash was what she was apprehensive about. After which A24, superb A24 received concerned.
“They’re the best place for this film,” she says, noting that they already had a relationship together with her due to her 2022 movie Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies.
Kidman’s personal relationship with Reijn started a number of years in the past after she noticed the director’s 2019 movie Intuition. “I knew I needed to work with such an rising expertise.”
An earlier “free” plan to work collectively didn’t pan out, however they stored in fixed contact when “she was penning this movie referred to as Babygirl. And I used to be like, ‘Huh, Babygirl!’ After which she despatched it to me. I used to be like, ‘Oh my God, that is so up my alley!’”
“You simply don’t get roles like this,” she says with a sigh.
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in Babygirl (2024). (A24/Courtesy Everett Assortment)
“I imply,” Kidman explains, “I feel by way of the exploration of a lady within the peak of her energy, after which the craving, the existential disaster that she’s having, that she’s nearly unaware that she’s having, the patterns in her life, and the best way by which she she’s fashioned her life — and she or he’s going, ‘Oh, this it. That is now my life.’”
And it’s uncommon in a movie of this nature “to have the protagonist be feminine, and solely her story adopted. You don’t observe anyone else’s, which is uncommon,” she notes.
Importantly, Kidman observes, “Halina is completely dedicated to the feminine journey on this movie, however not in a tortuous approach. I feel the movie will not be tortuous, which is what so many are. There’s no destroying of the lady. There’s no punishing of the lady. It’s her exploration and it’s her journey.”
But, Kidman stresses, it’s a movie that performs to each women and men “and all genders, since you’re going, ‘Okay, it’s relatable within the metaphoric approach to anybody that’s exploring their wishes, their yearnings, and their true genuine self, and their secrets and techniques and the best way by which they’re behaving.’”
Kidman says she was captivated making the film as a result of “it’s talking immediately from Helena’s voice as a result of she’s the author and the director, which is unbelievable. Sure, she’s very a lot in management. She edited the movie obsessively and I couldn’t imagine how she simply works seven days every week, 24/7,” she says with an admiring twinkle in her eye.
“I like her,” Kidman provides. “As a result of she’s additionally making a mark for herself now as a director and a author. And he or she gave me a job that I’ve by no means had in my life. It was actually at this stage in my life to go: ‘This got here out of nowhere and I’ve by no means skilled something prefer it, in all probability by no means will once more.’ And it was simply lovely being intertwined together with her and creating the story and the efficiency.”
Her reverence speaks to Kidman’s want to work with and encourage feminine administrators and writers.
It’s not idle chat both. Kidman made her goal clear years in the past, that she wished to work with a feminine director each eight months. Lately, that scope has been expanded to one thing like two to a few occasions per 12 months.
This 12 months alone, Kidman has shot or launched Babygirl; Welcome To Holland directed by Mimi Cave, which was filmed in Nashville, and is due for launch in 2025; the gripping restricted TV drama Expats, directed by Lulu Wang; and Susanne Bier’s The Excellent Couple. And Vicky Jenson directed the just lately launched Spellbound. In the meantime, Andrea Arnold shot seven of the 14 episodes for the brand new season of Massive Little Lies.
In February, Kidman will play a small position in David E. Kelley’s TV drama collection Margo’s Received Cash Troubles, which additionally stars Elle Fanning as Margo, a younger mom who determines to unravel her cash troubles. Michelle Pfeiffer performs her mom, a Hooters waitress.
Kidman notes the eight-part collection, tailored from Rufi Thorpe’s novel, can be directed by Dearbhla Walsh, who has been busy of late on Unhealthy Sisters. “So as soon as once more, it’s like placing ladies on the entrance and middle,” says Kidman, beaming.
Kidman’s producing; Elle and Dakota Fanning are among the many present’s govt producers.
Kidman and Sandra Bullock are awaiting a brand new screenplay draft for a sequel to 1998’s Sensible Magic, by which the 2 stars play sisters witches. “Proper now we’re type of within the midst of honing the scripts,” however she’s hopeful that the manufacturing will come collectively. “I like working with Sandy.”
She additionally “loves” witches.
In between our conversations, in individual in London, and over Zoom from Nashville, Kidman had been to see Depraved and Gladiator II “within the theater, in a cinema,” some extent she stresses.
She has a factor about witches. “Truthfully, I used to be enraptured by Depraved. It was beautiful. I liked it,” she trills.
Years in the past, when Stephen Daldry was on the Depraved venture, he idly toyed with the concept of asking Kidman to be in it however nothing got here of it. In any occasion, Kidman knew nothing of Daldry’s thought after I broach it.
“No person might have performed these roles aside from Cynthia and Ariana,” she believes, and I agree.
We each recall seeing Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel as the unique Glinda and Elphaba throughout early previews of Depraved on Broadway again in 2003.
What’s it about her and sorceresses? “They’re magical creatures, proper?” she says.
They usually’re not essentially at all times dangerous, as Depraved has proved. “Completely not all dangerous. Naughty typically, however not dangerous,” she permits.
Our revels are over when she’s referred to as again on set in Nashville to proceed filming Scarpetta, the Amazon TV adaptation of Patricia Cornwall’s bestselling novels about crime-solving forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, with Jamie Lee Curtis taking part in her sister and Ariana DeBose as her niece.