Waughhhh!” Nicole Kidman lets out a nasally wail, her face stretched into exaggerated, comic pain, her body covered in bandages, and her weight supported by Javier Bardem. She’s acting twice over, playing Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo to Bardem’s Desi Arnaz as Ricky, in Amazon Studios’ Being the Ricardos. The dram-com, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, could have been filled with more signature I Love Lucy pratfalls, but Sorkin was more interested in the real-life Ball, a promising dramatic actor who reinvented herself as a comedy star and business executive. Hence, the multidimensional Kidman.
When “Cut” is called, it’s meta; Kidman snaps out of Ricardo and bolts upright as Ball, rattling off notes to the men. In another scene, Ball sits back in an armchair, her legs outstretched on her desk, as the suits stress about the complications her pregnancy poses—for the sitcom. As they struggle to find words to describe Ball’s condition—the word pregnant was banned on the air, never mind a baby bump—the comedian makes the men at her feet the punch line. Kidman’s pitch-perfect deadpan: “Somebody should point a goddamn camera at this.”
“Aaron Sorkin wrote her as the smartest person in the room, because she was,” says Kidman. It was Ball who ultimately convinced CBS to let her Cuban-born husband play her sitcom husband. After divorcing Arnaz, she bought out his shares in Desilu Productions and became the first woman to lead a major production studio. As Kidman says, Ball never apologized for her smarts. “A lot of times, particularly as a woman, if you’re smart, there’s a lot of apology.”
Kidman has channeled other formidable real-life women, including Virginia Woolf (The Hours), Martha Gellhorn (Hemingway & Gellhorn), Diane Arbus (Fur), Grace Kelly (Grace of Monaco), and Gretchen Carlson (Bombshell). She imbues her fictional characters with such humanity that, on occasion in her prolific Oscar- and Emmy-studded career, she’s fooled her own immune system into thinking her character’s suffering is real, only to fall ill after filming. “Parts of the body don’t know, a lot of the time, what the difference is” between a role and real life, explains Kidman, who got sick after Big Little Lies, in which she played an abuse survivor. “I’ve started to understand a bit more to take care of yourself.”
Even with a psychologist (and scientist) for a father—and despite playing analyst types in Batman Forever, The Undoing, and Nine Perfect Strangers—Kidman is allergic to introspection. “I try not to overanalyze things,” says Kidman, who waves off her breathtaking résumé as the result of timing, acknowledging “fate, or whatever you want to call it.” She doesn’t entertain regret—“a very dangerous path…that can really do your head in.” And cynicism isn’t sensible—“it would deny me the ability to still be completely free and open.” She won’t even really call herself a movie star—“I’m in a state of just being willing to go with the flow”; “I’m just still in that place of going, ‘I’m not quite sure what defines a movie star.’ ” To her, it’s all noise. “My job is to stay feeling-centric, and emotional, and committed, and interested, and a seeker.”
Kidman has said she considers herself a character actor, and she, like Ball, has embraced her power behind the screen as well. After launching Blossom Films over a decade ago with Per Saari (they’ve produced Rabbit Hole, Big Little Lies, The Undoing, and Nine Perfect Strangers), the actor committed to “walking the talk” of creating more opportunities with and for women. One forthcoming project, Roar, with a cast that includes Merritt Wever and Cynthia Erivo, nabbed Apple as an enthusiastic, like-minded partner in that regard. “It’s very diverse, it’s very female-centric,” says Kidman. “It’s also a little oddball, which is great. I’m a little oddball, so I’m happy to support other oddballs.”
Kidman has enjoyed reaching viewers via the more democratic means of streaming, and she has felt the difference in the public response. “Before COVID, people would say, ‘Can I give you a hug? I want to tell you my story.’ It was a very different immediate relationship that I hadn’t really had. With Portrait of a Lady and Eyes Wide Shut, those things didn’t have that response. They were more like pedestal work. This is more grassroots, which has been extraordinary.”
And yet, after nearly 40 years of acting in more than 80 film and TV projects, Kidman insists, “My whole life is about staying in that place of humility—because you’re either in a place of humility or heading towards it.” It’s a sentiment Kidman shares with her husband, Grammy-winning country musician Keith Urban, and has applied to her own craft. “I still approach acting like I’ve just come out of drama school,” she says. “It’s really weird. It’s not like I’m choosing to do that. It’s just what it is. And when that evaporates, then I have no business being here doing this.”
HAIR, SOPHIE ROBERTS; MAKEUP, LIZ KELSH; MANICURE, MISS BETTY ROSE; TAILORS, WEAVE; ON-SET SITTINGS EDITOR, NATALIE PETREVSKI. SET DESIGN, STEFAN BECKMAN. VIDEO DIRECTED BY CATERINA VIGANÒ; DOP, DOMINIC HAYDN RAWLE; VFX AND COLOR GRADING, ISABELLA FORNASIERO; SOUND DESIGN AND MIX, SMIDER. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY PRODN AT ART + COMMERCE. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
Next: Kristen Stewart
Her turn in Spencer proves what close observers have always known: Despite her blockbuster past, she has the soul of an indie actor and iconoclast. Continue Reading »
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