A kinky new Nicole Kidman vehicle, just in time for Christmas? Maybe we have been good! “Babygirl,” from Dutch writer-director Halina Reijn (“Bodies Bodies Bodies”) is the steamy tale of a woman reclaiming her sexuality, joining films with similar themes (“Nightbitch,” “The Substance,” “The Last Showgirl”) as 2025 awards contenders.
Kidman plays Romy, a robotics company CEO who embarks on a passionate, BDSM-tinged affair with 20-something intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson). The film takes a look at intergenerational power dynamics in both the office and the bedroom.
Currently, “Babygirl” is sitting pretty with an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also picking up awards steam: Kidman has already gotten a Golden Globe lead performance nod, and she won best actress at the Venice International Film Festival. The star says that shooting the film felt “like a storm at times. It was tempestuous inside me, and it was penetrating my psyche, my dreamscape. It’s a really intense role.”
We sat down with Kidman and Reijn to discuss the demanding shoot, the director’s commitment to cultivating an atmosphere of freedom on set, and the advice from Paul Verhoeven that’s inspired her for years.
Jenelle Riley: Halina, you got your start in the business as an actor before transitioning to writing and directing.
Halina Reijn: My first job, I was in the first year of theater school, and they had auditions for Ophelia in “Hamlet.” I had done TV since I was 15, but I consider Ophelia my first serious acting job that really [allowed me to] show off my skills. Before that, it was more about discovering and exploring. Not like Nicole, who started acting when she was a young girl.
Nicole, what was your first professional job?
Nicole Kidman: I had a role in a [1983] film called “Bush Christmas.” I was 14, and I got to ride horses. It took six weeks to film, so I didn’t have to go to school for six weeks. I had little freckles all over my face and wild, curly hair. And then I did “BMX Bandits.”
“Babygirl” is such a sharp, daring, fascinating film. What was your inspiration for the story, Halina?
HR: All the roles that I played in the theater, really, because a lot of them are women looking for freedom who never really get it—and they all, weirdly, kill themselves. Ophelia, for instance, goes from being a virgin to drowning herself within five scenes. I always wanted to create my own stories about women looking for freedom, finding it, and staying alive.
And later, it was about this question that I really struggled with as a woman: Is it even possible to love all these different layers of our identity—not just the ones that we feel comfortable presenting to the outside world, but also the layers of ourselves that we’re more ashamed of?
When you’re working on a script, do you begin with research or with writing down your ideas?
HR: I start freehand-writing ideas right away, and then I do a one-pager and go into a treatment. When I had the idea that Romy should run a robotics company, I really had to do so much research, and also into the world of BDSM. It’s not necessarily something I know that much about, so I just really wanted to be sure I knew what I was talking about. You can have feelings and intuition about things, but when you’re writing, you want to be very knowledgeable before you start.
“Babygirl” has such a specific tone. Did you find that balance while you were writing the script, or did it happen once you started working with your actors on set?
HR: We wanted to play with these cliches and archetypes of the sexual thrillers of the ’90s, but also with classical female roles. And then, we wanted to transform it into this female-driven story with its own specific tone that was driven by the performances.
I feel, as a woman, that I have to perform all day long, you know? I want to be the perfect leader; I want to be the perfect daughter; I want to be the perfect friend. And I think Romy really suffers from that. She’s performing all day long, and at the beginning of the movie, she’s not able to really fully be herself.
NK: There was a wildness to the scenes. The blocking was there, but we didn’t have to stick to it, which is kind of fantastic for an actor. That’s when there’s a little bit of danger. That’s to do with the cinematographer, [Jasper Wolf,] as well—being able to capture that. It’s to do with Halina not going, “OK, we’ll hit this mark and stand there, and here’s the light.” None of that came into it. It was always very, very free on set, and that was exciting.
Nicole, you’ve taken on roles in so many different genres over the years. Did you do any special preparation for Romy?
NK: Halina and I just spent so much time [together]. We would do the scenes, and Halina would play the other characters; she can play any role. She played me with Harris because she wanted to separate us, at times, during rehearsal. So the rehearsal was about becoming incredibly close to her because the two of us together were making the performance. Because she’s writing and directing [the movie] and I’m [playing the role], it requires this kind of melding of spirits in a weird way.
HR: It was weird, and it was also a little magical. For both of us, the movie is in conversation with all these archetypes women have played [throughout] history. I think that is why Nicole and I really [understood] each other. Those characters are with us and in our DNA; we kind of evolved from them.
Nicole, Harris, and I felt we shouldn’t rehearse a lot. As an actress, I don’t necessarily love to rehearse movies. I think if you’re good, you just save it for the moment, and you learn your lines very, very well. If you have great actors, you can really lean on them. You don’t have to be scared as a director, like: Oh, my God, I have to rehearse because I have to see if my scene works. You just really have to let that go; you have to trust.
Do you have any advice for aspiring actors and filmmakers interested in exploring this kind of bold, vulnerable, unconventional storytelling?
HR: Paul Verhoeven once said to me, “You have to have a very specific question that you actually do not know the answer to. And this is a question that scares you and makes you nervous, but you’re really curious to know. And if you write that on a piece of paper, that will be your intention. And every time you’re distracted by: It’s never going to work, or nobody wants me, or people are mean to you, or when it becomes too much about ego, or you’re maybe a little arrogant, you always have that intention to go back to.”
I think that’s what me and Nicole also share: It’s all about spiritual intention. No matter what other people think of our movie or how many people buy a ticket, in the end, all we can do is have a pure intention that aligns with our souls.
This interview was hosted by ScreenCraft. It has been edited for clarity and length.
