Nicole Kidman is an Oscar winner, the lead of Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated final film, and will soon be seen as Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin’s “Being the Ricardos.” But over the past five years, she’s added something else to her resume, television star. After delivering HBO a hit last fall with “The Undoing,” Kidman has reunited with her Emmy-winning “Big Little Lies” creator David E. Kelley for “Nine Perfect Strangers,” and what better place to discuss this journey than the Television Critics Association’s virtual press tour.
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Kelley’s second adaptation of a Liane Moriarty novel, “Perfect” finds Kidman playing the mysterious Masha Dmitrichenko, the spiritual leader of Tranquillum, an exclusive wellness retreat. The facility’s hand-picked guests are portrayed by Melissa McCarthy, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Shannon, and Regina Hall, among others. Over the course of the series, Masha attempts to provoke, reveal, and heal their individual issues. Whether she has the qualifications to do so is one of the series’ big mysteries.
Like all the characters on the show, Masha’s own story is delivered in quick flashbacks that reveal more clues over time, but Kidman says she found her distinct Russian-American accent by putting “together her whole life story.”
“Strangely enough, the first time I met everyone except for Manny and Tiffany, I walked in as Masha, and I never related to anybody in any other way,” Kidman reveals. “I only related to them as Masha and stayed in the character. And the first scene we shot was the scene where I come in the room and say, ‘I am Masha. Welcome to Tranquillum.’ And then, I was able to stay in that place where it was…I wanted a very calm healing energy to emanate all the time.”
Kidman continues, “So, I remember going over to people and sort of putting my hand on their heart or holding their hand. They would talk to me or use my name, Nicole, and I would completely ignore it. I’d only respond to Masha. And at the end of the shoot, I think it was Melvin and Samara that came to me and said, ‘We’ve never heard your real voice or your Australian accent.’ But it was the only way…I could actually relate to people was that way because I felt like, otherwise, I would be doing a performance, and I didn’t want to feel that way. And then, each person would come and do their scenes with me in my rooms, and…I would create a different space for them. So it was a really weird place to exist. So, now, I’m saying, ‘Hi, Melissa. Hi, Regina. Hi, Bobby. This is Nicole.’ But that was the way in which I could do the performance.”
Kidman pauses and adds laughing to herself, ” I am bat sh*t crazy. “
Despite a now long history in television including two Emmys and three individual nominations, Kidman once again took questions on what has drawn her to the current streaming, episodic medium. Making sure to point out she’s only shot series with one filmmaker behind the camera (Jane Campion, Jean Marc-Valle, Andrea Arnold, Susanne Bier, and now, Jonathan Levine), she reminds the audience that she got her start appearing in mini-series for Australian television. “I’ve always embraced it, “she says.
“I just think now it’s such a fantastic landscape because you have these writers and directors who are willing to work in this territory. And you still go — you can go back to [Krzysztof] Kieślowski and the ‘Dekalog’ series,” Kidman says. “I mean, he did that way before anybody was doing this. [Igmar] Bergman did ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ and it was a television, it was a limited series. So, it’s not like these extraordinary filmmakers have not ever worked in this territory before, it’s just becoming possible again in a huge way for all of us.
Kidman says you have to be “rigorous” with it, recalling a conversation with her good friend Campion.
“I remember going on a walk with Jane and she was saying, ‘It’s incredibly hard to keep a storyline vibrant and alive through a six or eight-hour episode storytelling.’ And people forget that that is an art form in itself,” Kidman says. “It’s so difficult. You know, when you have 90 minutes or two hours to tell your story, that’s very different than trying to keep it compelling and intriguing and hypnotizing over the course of a much longer time span. And it’s — and David will talk to you about that obviously, but it’s you have to be incredibly rigorous with it. And that’s why I’ve done four shows with David.”
“Nine Perfect Strangers” debuts on Hulu on August 18
