He knew her films , of course, but Kidman herself — the woman behind all that cryptic, porcelain, slightly alien elegance — seemed a bit removed on the set of their BDSM drama Babygirl.
And it was hard! But still: this is the Nicole Kidman. Acting royalty with a laundry list of bangers to her name. Dickinson respected the distance between them, not wanting to distract her from her process. But could he? Just once? Gus Van Sant , how was that? Kidman was nice about it. Entertain his fandom. Dickinson is 28 and handsome, with neatly lacquered hair, wide-leg, Fifties-style slacks, and his feet on the furniture.
He speaks softly, sheepishly. Meanwhile, Samuel, his character in Babygirl , is brazen, volatile, and a tiny bit outrageous — he lends the film its kick, its mischief. We should probably talk about the sex.
Babygirl is, inevitably, full of the stuff — not soft-lit, glamorous, Nineties-thriller sex , but charged, ungainly and guttural. It has to be. New subscribers only. Plan auto-renews until cancelled. I tell him that I saw Babygirl at an early screening alongside a handful of other journalists, and that one left slightly appalled.
They found it disturbing. It asks questions. Dickinson has largely avoided that kind of escapism so far. No capes! No smiling! The funny thing about Dickinson specifically, though, is that you can imagine his career having taken an alternative trajectory — one that might have been a lot more conventional and a lot less interesting. Luckily, no one saw those films. Then Maleficent: Mistress of Evil a year later, where he played pretty and princely to the camp scenery-chewing of Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer.
