Babygirl — the erotic thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a CEO who puts her career and family on the line for an affair with a young intern (played by Harris Dickinson) — features a surprising Christmas backdrop, which writer-director Halina Reijn reveals was a last-minute, thematic pivot.
“I wrote it as a summer movie, it was all going to take place in the Hamptons and it was going to be on the beach,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday. “Then the strike happened, of course it was pencils down and we had to wait, and then the schedule became Christmas. And I was like, ‘We should definitely make this into a Christmas movie,’ and after the strike, I just rewrote the whole thing to Christmas.”
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Many of the scenes feature elaborate Christmas trees and holiday music, as Reijn added that the change “had such a special meaning to me because the character is trying to be this perfect woman and this perfect mother and perfect leader. And the whole sort of American idea of Christmas is so like [humming a Christmas carol “Sleigh Ride”] so I felt like that’s perfect, it’s all so performative in a way. It’s joyful but it’s also kind of performative, so I thought it was a great metaphor for Romy, the main character.”
Kidman (wearing custom Balenciaga) noted of the pivoting from a summer setting to the holidays that “you’ve got to get your movie made, and I’m always a believer in whatever comes your way you adapt and you flow. If you go into everything trying to control the situation and are very rigid it’s not going to work. So the ease in which you can adapt — and having a writer-director, she goes, ‘OK I’ll just rewrite it.’ Very, very helpful.” Dickinson joked that he forgot about the Christmas connection until he saw the film, but “Why not, Merry Christmas!”
Reijn explained that her two stars were too A-list to have them do a chemistry read so she had to go off of feeling, and was taken with Dickinson after watching his performance in Triangle of Sadness.
“I became obsessed with the idea of the two of them. They’re both tall and incredibly talented, and they’re both strong and also they can change into almost children within a split second,” she explained of Kidman and Dickinson. “They have the vulnerability and the sort of dominance in them, and that’s what we need in this story about power play.”
Kidman said that the pair had “an ease that comes and that’s really exciting. Antonio Banderas [who plays her character’s husband] as well, because it really is a triangle; I just was so lucky to have these men who were willing to come in and support the female protagonist primarily.”
Reijn also spoke about using an intimacy coordinator on the film, comparing them to stunt coordinators where without them “you would actually hurt each other and it would look pretty lame.”
“It’s just a way of creating much more intense sexual scenes, and it just creates clarity for everybody and that gives everybody a calmness,” she continued. “Because we’re all calm and we’re very well prepared and we know the full choreography, we can actually let go in the moment and bring in the risk and a little bit of danger within a safe space.”
Babygirl hits theaters on Christmas Day, Dec. 25.
