I f-cking love Nicole Kidman’s new interview, written by Ben Allen, with British GQ so much it might be one of my pop culture highlights of the year. 

 

Of course the part of the interview that’s getting the most play is what she says when she’s asked about That Meme. You know the one. And it comes up all the time on social media to express… well… this: 

 

We’ll get to the meme in a minute because her cover story is so much better than that meme! This, of course, is in service of Babygirl, her new film coming out at Christmas, in which she plays a married CEO who has an affair with a much younger intern is a story about women’s relationship to their own bodies, their desires, their shame, and ultimately their self image. Everyone who has seen the film has described her as “fearless”. But what emerges from this piece is that Nicole Kidman does, in fact, fear. She is afraid… and she does it anyway. 

 

Because it’s impossible to live without fear and work the way she does without fear. It's impossible for all us to approach living without fear. To fear is to be human, and to strip her of that emotion is to take away the humanity in her creativity – and this is essential to her approach as an artist. Whatever she’s doing, whether she’s in blockbusters or independent films or cheesy Netflix limited series, Nicole Kidman is exploring human experience and complication in the widest range possible. 

This is also why she’s reluctant to describe her process as “method” but those feelings, as they move through her in character, take hold in real life. The difference, of course, between her and Jared Leto is that she doesn’t project them on the people around her, or compel them to act differently around her as her character. It’s also in the motivation. Actors like Jared Leto go there for Performance sake which is, a flex if you will. Which, by the way, undermines the spirit of what art is and who it’s for. So this, to me, is the most important thing that Nicole says in the interview, that pretty much defines everything there is to know about her as an artist – when she explains why she took the role in Rabbit Hole, about a mother coping with the loss of her child, right after she had her child: 

“I had to make it because I had my child, and I was like, ‘OK, now I’ve got to make a film that somehow deals with the most devastating possibility that other people have had to go through,’” she says. “It was awful making it, but I wanted to make it because there are people out there living that experience and I wanted to reach out to them and go, ‘Here’s something for you, and you’re loved and understood.’

 

That, right there, is why she’s always believable, no matter what crazy f-cking thing she’s doing on film or even in those AMC commercials. I believe her in a way that I have never believed it from Jared Leto.

Speaking of those AMC commercials and all the times she’s been memed and WTFed online – let’s go back to the photo, the one that everyone thinks was taken as she was leaving her lawyer’s office after finalising the divorce from Tom Cruise. 

She says during the interview that that’s not true:

“That was not me; that was from a film, that wasn’t real life. I know that image!” 

I’m not sure anyone’s been able to identify what film it was from but it doesn’t matter. Because it’s not like she was going to confirm that yes, indeed, she was so relieved to be free from the clutches of her ex-husband’s weird ass cult, she couldn’t help but throw her head back and scream “FREEDOMMMM” at the sky. But you’ll note, she doesn’t really fight it that hard and what’s really clever is that she redirects it back to FILM. So when she says later on that…

 

“I’ll do anything for cinema, so you can meme me as much as you want.”

…it feels kind of like a blessing to the internet to go on doing whatever it is that you want to do with that image if you’re using her as a cinematic vessel to express whatever it is that you’re getting out. This, after all, is her job as an artist. In her words, again:

“Here’s something for you, and you’re loved and understood.”

One final note about Nicole here – it’s the styling, I mean she can wear the sh-t out of almost everything but this shoot in particular is unreal, especially the cover photo: 

 

Still, look after look is a banger, and I don’t know if you do this but I always look at the photo credit immediately after every image and underneath most of them it says, “by X Designer, from stylist’s personal archive”. I’m reading the article, and this is repeated over and over again and I’m like, who the f-ck is this stylist with this PERSONAL ARCHIVE. 

And I get to the bottom and of course, it’s Katie Grand. One of the most successful and connected stylists and fashion editors in the business. Imagine doing a photo shoot with Nicole Kidman, with allllll the designers you would have at your disposal, and you’re like… nah, I’ll just go into my own closet?!