Actress. Producer. Music supervisor?
Nicole Kidman used her connections to make a pivotal scene happen in her new erotic thriller, Baby girl.
According to director Halina ReijnThe Oscar winner, 57, was instrumental in securing the rights to the classic INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart” for a montage scene in the new film.
“We put it on the montage. I almost cried. My editor and I were yelling at each other,” Reijn explained in an interview with the “ReelBlend Podcast” on Friday, December 27. “The next day I called [movie studio] A24 and I said, ‘Okay, we gotta get the rights to this song.’ They said no. They said it was a hard no. And I haven’t slept for a week. I tried every other song I could think of. Nothing worked.”
At that point, Reijn contacted her leading actress, who managed to pull the strings.
“And then I called Nicole, just because we had gotten so close. I was like, ‘I’m so depressed.’ And she said, ‘Give me a few days.’ And she did that,” says Reijn. “She has the rights. She reached the real people and did it for us. Amazing.”
In Baby girlKidman plays a powerful CEO who begins a steamy affair with a young intern who plays Harris Dickinson.
The film’s director recently defended the 29-year age difference between her two stars. (Dickinson is 28.)
In an interview with W magazine published on Wednesday, December 25, Reijn was asked if he wanted to add to the pantheon of romance films released this year that feature an older woman and a younger man (including Kidman’s A family affair and the Anne Hathaway-starring The idea of you).
“When we see a film where the male actor is the same age as the female actor, we find it strange. That’s insane. It should be completely normalized that age differences change and that women have different relationships,” says Reijn. “We are no longer trapped in a box. We internalize the male gaze, we internalize patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it. It’s really difficult.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter which was published earlier this month, Kidman recalled being shocked by an early review of Baby girl.
“I find it very liberating, this film. I hope so,” she said. “Some people said this is the most disturbing movie they’ve ever seen, and I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.'”
For her part, Kidman relished the chance to play an older woman who embraced her sensual side.
“Often women are discarded as sexual beings at a certain point in their career. So it was very nice to be seen in this way,” said the Oscar winner THR. “From the moment I read it, I thought, ‘Yes, this is a voice I haven’t seen, this is a place I haven’t been, I don’t think the audience has been.’ My character has reached a stage where she has all this power, but she’s not sure who she is, what she wants, what she desires, even though she seems to have it all. And I think that is very recognizable.”