Harris Dickinson, star of A24’s erotic drama Babygirl, said there was a particular line in the film he didn’t want to say to co-star Nicole Kidman during filming.
During an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show (via The Wrap), the actor told the host that he related to his character Samuel’s position in the film as a lowly young intern approaching and ultimately dominating powerful CEO Romy, given that he himself is a relative newcomer in the film business sharing such emotionally and physically intimate scenes with a powerhouse actor like Kidman.
“For an intern to do that as well to the boss — that was hard to do, as well,” Dickinson said. “Like for me to have to come in and do that to Nicole Kidman, and I was like, well how do I do this?”
Admiring and respecting her as he did, Dickinson revealed that he was worried some of the dialogue written for him by filmmaker Halina Reijn might cross a line. “There’s a line in it where I say, like, I’m in the car with her and I say, ‘I’m not interested in that, you look like a mother.’ And I said to Halina, our director, I was like, ‘I can’t say that.’ That’s really, that’s a little bit rude, isn’t it?”
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It happened almost exactly the same way as it does the film, except for one big difference.
Despite his reservations, the line remained in the script and ended up on screen. Likely because its rudeness speaks to Samuel’s desire to subvert what Romy expects of him, thus shifting the power dynamic between them.
As Dickinson put it, “He comes into her very stiff, high-powered CEO — everyone’s revering her, and he kind of sees that and watches it, and he’s like, I’m not going to do that… I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to offer a cookie, I’m going to almost disrespect her a little bit, in a way.”
‘Babygirl’ is Fundamentally a Subversive Movie
While Barrymore noted during the interview that the shifting of power from Romy to Samuel is “sexy,” other critics were less than enamored with the age gap between the characters. It’s something director Reijn has long felt ridiculous, given that when older men date younger women in film, no one bats an eye. “There should be total normalization of the different kinds of relationships women find themselves in,” Reijn explained.
In this way, Reijn herself has subverted expectations about age and sexuality, creating an often tense but thoroughly heartfelt cinematic journey that takes audiences to places they might not want to go. The very foundation of Babygirl, in fact, is a subversion of another erotic character study, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which stars Kidman and then-husband Tom Cruise, but one that follows a woman’s journey instead of a man’s.
As for her work in the film, Kidman has received a Golden Globe nomination, and several critics think she’ll receive an Oscar nomination as well. Dickinson name hasn’t come up in conversations around best actor or even best supporting actor, however, which is a shame: his performance is just as nuanced, vulnerable, and captivating as his more famous co-star.
Release Date
December 25, 2024
Director
Halina Reijn
Runtime
114 Minutes
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