Looking back on the experience of playing the role, she recalls the discomfort and complexity around it, and that she “never came out of it, really”. “It left me ragged. At some point I was like, I don’t want to be touched,” she said. “I don’t want to do this anymore, but at the same time I was compelled to do it.
Niko Tavernise
“I felt very exposed as an actor, as a woman, as a human being. I had to go in and go out like, I need to put my protection back on. What have I just done? Where did I go? What did I do?”
Nicole also spoke about her anxiety about the world seeing Babygirl, as well as the safe environment that director Halina Reijn created on set. “Halina would hold me and I would hold her, because it was just very confronting to me,” she said. “It was being able to talk unbelievably honestly and graphically — and that’s woman-to-woman, as though you are sitting on your bed and talking to your sister or your best friend. That’s incredibly safe.
“Halina has a very strong maternal instinct, so she was very protective of all of us. But particularly me.”
Halina herself told IndieWire that she’s sure that she’s made a “really hot movie”, above all else.“I know we accomplished one thing, and that is that we made a really hot movie. I don’t know about good, bad — that’s up to everybody — but I’m sure of that,” she said.
Babygirl cast
Alongside Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson will be Everything Now and Talk To Me star Sophie Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Jean Reno, Victor Slezak, Esther McGregor, Vaughan Reilly and Anoop Desai.
Courtesy of A24
Babygirl release date
It will drop in UK cinemas on 20 December.
Babygirl trailer
No trailer has been dropped yet – we’ll update this article when one does.