In her new film, Oscar winner Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a cool, controlling CEO who is dissatisfied with her sex life and her long marriage to Jacob (Antonio Banderas). When a new hire, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) flirts with her at the office, their relationship goes from being boss and employee to something far more complicated.
The idea for Babygirl came to writer director Halina Reijn after a friend confessed that in 25 years of marriage, she’d never experienced an orgasm with her husband. Fascinated, Reijn built that confession into Babygirl, writing the role of Romy with Kidman in mind.
As Romy and Samuel let their guards down and explore their sexual fantasies, the power dynamic between them shifts and mutates. Says Reijn: “Samuel sees a vulnerability in Romy immediately that nobody else might see in that way, and she sees in him a strength.”
Secret desires
Kidman agrees: “She’s not capable of being completely authentic with her husband or herself because she’s so frightened of revealing her innermost thoughts, desires, feelings and secrets, and what she considers shameful.
It’s not often that we see actresses in their fifties being sexual on film. Kidman admits she was terrified at times but trusted in Heijn’s artistic vision. “I’ve worked with so many directors but I haven’t worked with a woman on this subject matter,” she says. “When you’re talking to a woman director and she’s like, ‘Okay, let’s work on this orgasm together’, you’re not going to say that with a guy. It was just a very warm environment to work in.”
Liberating
In one memorable scene, Samuel gets Romy to join him at an underground rave and really let her hair down. It felt very liberating for the actress, who has been married to Keith Urban for 18 years. She says: “I can’t tell you the details of it because I was so in the performance, I staggered out of it at the end going, ‘What just happened?’ It feels a bit like a dream,” she says.
“I think back on it, and I’m like, ‘I was in the middle of winter in New York, I was dancing in a rave, just taking my clothes off. What was I doing?’” she laughs.
Babygirl opens in New Zealand and Australia on 30 January.
