Nicole Kidman on ‘Babygirl,’ Lessons She Learned From Stanley Kubrick and the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar Party With Madonna and Courtney Love: ‘That Made My Year’

If you think Nicole Kidman is playing the title role in “Babygirl,” the Oscar-winning actress wants a word with you.

It’s just a few days before Christmas and I am talking to Kidman over Zoom for the first “Just for Variety” episode of 2025.

Written and directed by Halina Reijn, the erotic thriller stars Kidman as a tech CEO who has a very kinky sub-dom affair with an intern, played by Harris Dickinson.

I ask Kidman if she or Dickinson is the babygirl.

“Both, right?” she says. “As Halina says in the ‘father figure’ scene, we’re not quite sure who’s the daddy. One minute I’m the daddy, next minute he’s the daddy, which is what I love about the way in which she depicts the generations, the way in which power doesn’t matter what age you are, how it shifts. I think everything’s subverted in this film.”

Tell me about your process of first reading the script. Do you have a ritual that you do when you read a script? Do you go off into a corner somewhere? Or is it someone sends it to you and you start reading?

Well, if it’s a good script, I mean, I sit down and I start reading. And then if it holds me, I just read and I don’t stop. And then I make notes, immediately.

Immediately?

Kubrick taught me that. He said, “Because there’s no other thing than the first read. After that, it’s all going to be a slightly different response reaction, but it won’t be immediate and intuitive.” And all the ideas that appear or the lack of things in there. So he used to send you the script in an envelope and say, “I’m going to pick it up in two hours,” and then he would take it back, to make sure that you sat and read it.

Did you send it back to Kubrick with notes?

I didn’t make any notes with him. I was just like, “I’m in, whatever. I don’t even need to read it.” But with Halina and with every script since subsequently, I’ll make notes immediately. If I can’t finish it, then I know it’s not for me. And that isn’t because it’s good or bad, it just means I’m not in it. But with something like “Babygirl,” I read beginning to end and then I just called her and said, “Okay, how do we get it made? What do we do? Tell me now what to do.” We also just talked a lot about what it made me feel, what I responded to, ideas and I had questions for her. It was different to what the film is now, because it was the first draft, or it was I think, one of her first drafts where it was still in the shaping form. There were things in it that you and I can talk about another time, that are not in there now. But it was beautiful to be on that ground level, entering the project that way. Because the other times you enter and it’s a final draft and there’s nothing to be shifted or moved. So this was very much, it was still in motion. But the ideas were so solid and the structure was solid.

How much is your decision when you’re reading the script going, “I kind of fear this, that means I need to do it?”

No, that’s too cerebral for me. It’s too intellectual. I was turned on by it. I was thrilled. I was excited by the actual scenes and things, and then I was scared. I had almost like an audience response to it. And I just loved Romy. I mean, I loved Samuel too. I loved Jacob. It was always taking me by surprise, because everything I thought that it was going to be, it wasn’t. And I just was really captured by it. I was Romy when I was reading it. It’s visceral. The movie is visceral, and so that was my response to it. Then it was like, “Well, how do we do this?” There were things where I was like, “Gosh, I don’t understand this,” because Romy didn’t understand what she was doing. So there were these strange images, which I was like, “What does that mean?” But that’s because it’s a dreamscape mixed with a genre film.

There are some hypotheses, some thoughts out there that this is all Romy’s dream, a fantasy.

I didn’t think that when I read it. I love different responses… And I can be convinced of that now, watching it, I can go, “Ah, interesting.” But that’s not how I initially experienced it.

When people started to tell me why they thought that, I was like, “Okay, how did he get this internship? He’s a little too schlubby for this place. Maybe he’s a little too old?”

When it was unfolding, I was like, “Did he actually plant himself in there, because he’d seen her and met her earlier at some point and become obsessed?” Who knows? That’s always the push-pull in it. And Halina has strong answers to it, but I’m always reluctant to answer those things because audiences should always be able to ascertain what they want from it. It’s like when you go and see a painting and you go, “Well, now it looks different,” or, “Now I’m responding differently to it,” or, “What I was offended by, I’m now drawn to.”

That’s what makes art interesting, that you’re having a discussion afterward. Two human beings have watched the same movie at the same time, and your brains are going in completely different directions. That’s resonating. I imagine that’s the ultimate goal for an artist.

Amazing, yes. And I’ve been in films that have done that. This is an extreme version of it, probably the most extreme for me.

I know you’ve said “Eyes Wide Shut” is more of the male lens with a male protagonist.

Well, marriage, it was about a marriage. But obviously, I was in a different sphere. I was part of his story. And now 20 years later, this is a thing, but they’re very different films. I’ve circled grief and loss and sex and fantasy and desire and yearning. Things that are interesting. I mean, I love dealing in different realms too, like in “Rabbit Hole,” where it’s about parallel universes almost, and wanting to exist in a parallel universe, because this universe is painful. Those things resonate deeply. But I love, as I say, filmmakers who have philosophical points of view.

The other night, me and a bunch of my gay boy friends were having a Nicole Kidman love fest.

I love that. Tell me more. Why wasn’t I invited?

My friend Glenn turns and goes, “You know what? I love what she said recently about why she’s acting so much and how it empowers female filmmakers. And she could get stories made.” I said, “Well, first of all, that was my interview I did with her, so thanks.”

That was to you. That went everywhere. Thank you. It was just us talking on the red carpet.

It was such a beautiful answer. And I don’t know if people didn’t expect that would be the answer. But once you said it, it makes sense.

I get to put my weight and my power and my voice behind people that are either having second chances, third chances, beginning or needing guidance. That’s a purpose for me, so I’m happy to be doing it.

Do you know the first time I saw you, Nicole?

Where?

The Vanity Fair Oscar Party when you were wearing the Galliano dress.

That’s when Madonna and Courtney Love said to me, “Best dressed,” and I was like, “What? Oh my God.” Both of them. They made my year.

I didn’t know what the Vanity Fair Party was. I was an assistant at Premiere and I started a party page. I walked in and I said, “Everyone’s famous in here. This is wild.”

Premiere was a really good magazine, wasn’t it?

That was my first job in entertainment journalism.

Wow. I was just really starting out. I’d done things in Australia and then I came over here and I did “Days of Thunder.” That’s crazy. But it’s lovely too, because I love that you’re still here and we’ve grown up together, we’ve watched things change and shift, but we’re still incredibly excited about what’s to come and what’s going on now. It’s so nice to be a vital part of it still, right?