EXCLUSIVE: Nicole Kidman says she was smitten the second filmmaker and author Halina Reijn revealed the identify of a film she was writing. “I really 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 “utterly kind of hypnotized” by its “very fashionable take a look at ladies’s sexuality, but in addition simply want and who we’re authentically as individuals and whether or not we’re cherished for who we’re.”
Babygirl, which performs in theaters nationwide from Dec. 25, has been having that hypnotizing impact on pageant and awards season audiences as effectively, 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 Finest Actress.
The movie does appear to have ignited some sense of “fireplace 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 pieces, or so it appears.
A husband named Jacob, who’s within the Phwoar class with a capital P – straightforward to tug off since he’s performed by Antonio Banderas; two teenage daughters; a splashy Manhattan residence; 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 girl who “has all the pieces” doesn’t know the best way 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 Unhappiness), an intern who chooses Romy, “the older girl,” to mentor him.
They quickly grow to be the thing of one another’s want and so they maintain little or no again.
Each Banderas and Dickinson “assist the trajectory of the girl” and that’s as uncommon as hen’s enamel.
“However they’re actually nice roles too. I believe 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 when it comes to, ‘Okay, now this horrible husband.’ He’s a stunning 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 kind of seems as Samuel, and a few individuals have mentioned, ‘Properly, possibly it’s a dream, the entire movie. Possibly it’s all a fantasy.’ Which I assumed was attention-grabbing. And it’s definitely 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, Primary 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 thought 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 anxious about. After which A24, wonderful A24 acquired concerned.
“They’re the fitting place for this film,” she says, noting that they already had a relationship along 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 scripting this movie known 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 believe when it comes to the exploration of a girl within the top of her energy, after which the craving, the existential disaster that she’s having, that she’s virtually unaware that she’s having, the patterns in her life, and the best way through which she she’s fashioned her life — and he or she’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 comply with 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 method. I believe the movie is just not tortuous, which is what so many are. There’s no destroying of the girl. There’s no punishing of the girl. 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 method to anybody that’s exploring their needs, their yearnings, and their true genuine self, and their secrets and techniques and the best way through which they’re behaving.’”
Kidman says she was captivated making the film as a result of “it’s talking straight from Helena’s voice as a result of she’s the author and the director, which is improbable. Sure, she’s very a lot in management. She edited the movie obsessively and I couldn’t imagine how she simply works seven days per week, 24/7,” she says with an admiring twinkle in her eye.
“I really 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 stunning being intertwined along 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 needed to work with a feminine director each eight months. In recent times, that scope has been expanded to one thing like two to 3 occasions per yr.
This yr 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 Good 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 Large Little Lies.
In February, Kidman will play a small function in David E. Kelley’s TV drama sequence Margo’s Obtained 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 sequence, tailored from Rufi Thorpe’s novel, will likely be directed by Dearbhla Walsh, who has been busy of late on Dangerous Sisters. “So as soon as once more, it’s like placing ladies on the entrance and heart,” says Kidman, beaming.
Kidman’s producing; Elle and Dakota Fanning are among the many present’s government producers.
Kidman and Sandra Bullock are awaiting a brand new screenplay draft for a sequel to 1998’s Sensible Magic, through which the 2 stars play sisters witches. “Proper now we’re kind of within the midst of honing the scripts,” however she’s hopeful that the manufacturing will come collectively. “I really 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 attractive. I cherished it,” she trills.
Years in the past, when Stephen Daldry was on the Depraved mission, he idly toyed with the thought of asking Kidman to be in it however nothing got here of it. In any occasion, Kidman knew nothing of Daldry’s concept once 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 known 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 enjoying her sister and Ariana DeBose as her niece.
