“That push-pull is what was exciting,” Babygirl star Nicole Kidman says of her character Romy. “The self-sabotaging and the anger at herself, and the humiliation and then the thrill, the excitement— I think that’s what made it such a roller coaster.”
Kidman, speaking with That Shelf via Zoom, performs at the top of her game in Babygirl playing an executive who dives headlong into a risky affair with younger intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Romy thrives on the dynamics of power and control—but also the thrill of submitting to Samuel—as the affair lets her taste new facets of her being. Kidman’s brave performance is earning some of the best reviews of her career, including a Best Actress win at the Venice Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination.
The roller coaster of emotions and thrills puts everything on the line, including Romy’s career and family. However, the risks increase the payoff as Romy acquiesces to Samuel’s demands in seedy hotels over the holidays. Simply put, Babygirl is the best Christmas movie since Eyes Wide Shut.
The thrill of the provocative film comes in Romy’s sense of self-discovery and exploration. Kidman says that writer/director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) kept her and Dickinson apart prior to filming to facilitate the awkwardness of their first meetings. Meanwhile, Kidman says that Reijn encouraged her to spend more time with co-star Antonio Banderas, who plays Romy’s husband, Jacob, to create the lived-in sense of comfort and familiarity entailed within a long marriage.
“The idea of exploring this with these two men, I had to feel safe and I had an incredible triangle,” says Kidman. “Everything was modulated to support that, capturing the chemistry on screen and capturing the authentic truth and trying to be very, very real—not performative.”
Kidman says that exploring the element of performance opened up the layers of Reijn’s screenplay, which uses an infidelity drama to interrogate gender dynamics in both the workplace and family life. “The journey of Romy is that she’s performed her whole life. She performs being the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the CEO—all of the aspects of her,” says Kidman. “The idea of then finally finding out what she really wants, and it would change because as she’s exploring it, as with any human being, she goes, ‘Oh, this is what I want. No, actually this isn’t what I want.’ It’s like a magnet that’s pulling her that she can’t resist.”
That push-pull dynamic ratchets up the tension as Romy tries to break from the affair. But that shifts the dynamics of her working relationship with Samuel. In turn, that shift only makes her hungrier for the intimacy—and danger—that she can’t get from Jacob.
The affair calls for some steamy scenes as Samuel enjoys his advantage over Romy. She, in turn, feeds her appetite to try new things she could never share with Jacob. Kidman says she, Reijn, and her co-stars worked with an intimacy coordinator to take their characters to vulnerable places. The actress notes that she’s been working with coordinators since they became standard practice amid the #MeToo movement, starting with Big Little Lies, Jean-Marc Vallée’s mini-series that earned Kidman an Emmy for her performance as a survivor of domestic violence.
Kidman says she finds intimacy coordinators an important role on set. “Everyone feels safe. They know that if they don’t feel safe, there’s access to changing that,” says Kidman. “You never feel that you’re put in a position where you’re doing something you’re not willing to do.”
It’s an important perspective as Babygirl explicitly deals with the implications of slip-ups, safety, and power in relationships. Kidman, however, remains humble when asked about enjoying the level of power she’s achieved in Hollywood, including one of the most prolific runs for an actor in recent memory.
“I think it’s always in motion,” says Kidman. “You’re only as good as your last production, really, and the success of that. It’s very tenuous, anyway, so when it’s available to you, I think it’s there to be shared. It’s like, ‘Great, we can get a film made, let’s go.’ It’s always so precarious. You never know what’s going to happen next. And I think because my taste is so idiosyncratic, for Babygirl to get made, that was a big deal.”
