Nicole Kidman has spoken about how the intimate scenes in her upcoming film Babygirl were shot after she had to stop filming on a few occasions.
The movie has Kidman playing a business executive who begins an affair with an intern (Harris Dickinson), while her husband (Antonio Banderas) is none the wiser, – though one might expect him to find out at some point in service of drama.
Things get pretty steamy in the film if the trailer is anything to go by, and Kidman said that she had to stop the cameras rolling a few times as she said ‘I don’t want to orgasm any more’.
She explained that in the intimate scenes ‘it was almost like a burnout’, and had words of praise for the movie’s intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot.
Kidman said she felt ‘incredibly safe’ even if the ‘vulnerable’ filming process left her feeling ‘ragged’ at times.
Nicole Kidman with Babygirl director Halina Reijn and co-star Harris Dickinson (Eric Charbonneau/A24 via Getty Images)
Speaking to PEOPLE, the Oscar winning star said that exploring the world of kink in Babygirl required ‘an enormous amount of trust’ between her and co-star Harris Dickinson.
She said: “We would look at each other and go ‘okay’. I’ve always been on a quest as an actor, I’m always going, where have I not been? And what can I explore as a human being? And this was an area I’d never been.
“There’s a sort of a jump off the cliff thing where you go, okay, I’m just going to abandon everything and explore this with the people that I trust in a genre that is already set, but hopefully we can explore new territory and especially with the female at the helm.”
Kidman added that Babygirl director Halina Reijn made sure the actors knew ‘I will protect you’ and reassured them ‘nothing that’s going to be in the film is anything you are not comfortable with’.
Kidman said ‘an enormous amount of trust’ was involved in putting together the intimate scenes in Babygirl. (Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Her co-star Dickinson added: “Of course there were days where I would go in really terrified of a scene or I don’t know how I’m going to do this.
“There was never a day that if the scene wasn’t working or if we weren’t comfortable or we weren’t getting something, we never felt that time was more important. It was just like, ‘Okay, everyone go away for a second’.”
With the director and intimacy coordinator making sure everyone involved was comfortable and the actors having plenty of trust in each other, it all added up to a shoot where they could do ‘radically long takes’ of the intimate scenes.
Babygirl releases on Christmas Day – should you consider watching an A24 movie with lots of intimacy to be a fun festive activity.