One of the most memorable scenes in filmmaker Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, an erotic thriller with BDSM undertones, involves no touching at all. It happens when Romy (Nicole Kidman), a polished CEO, devoted wife, and doting mother attends her successful robotics company’s holiday party at a dark Manhattan bar. Holding court with her rapt employees, she locks eyes with her surly but charming intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who has a waiter bring her a tall glass of milk. Despite herself, Romy downs the drink, implicitly accepting the terms of the psychosexual mind games that mark the pair’s May-December office affair. As he walks out into the night, Samuel whispers to her, “Good girl.”
It’s the sort of scene that feels designed to go viral, but it was, in fact, drawn from real life. Before making her directorial debut with 2022’s horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, 49-year-old Reijn was better known as an actress, especially in her native Netherlands, where she dominated the stage. The milk scene happened to her after one such theater performance in her 30s, when she went to a local bar to burn off her post-show adrenaline. A famous Belgian actor, “way, way younger” than her, sent her a glass of milk from across the bar. “I drank it, and he just walked out,” she tells W. “I thought, ‘How does this guy get the courage?’ I did think it was a very sensual thing to do. And I thought it was very funny.’”
Babygirl is filled with moments like that—sexy, but also humorous, and more often than not, a bit awkward. For Reijn, the Golden Globe-nominated film is very clearly about a woman “trying to liberate herself,” a concept she sought to explore when she realized that most of the iconic female roles she had played, like Shakespeare’s Ophelia or Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, all end up dead. She aimed to write about the same timeless topics as the masters: power, sexuality, surrender—but with a different outcome.
As Romy keeps up the appearance of an ideal life, dutifully attending her Botox appointments, engaging in pleasureless sex with her husband, touting her company’s PR-crafted statements, and patiently parenting her bratty teenagers, she loses herself in her reckless relationship with Samuel, nearly destroying everything she’s worked for—and herself—in the process. “My movie is a warning,” Reijn says. “What happens if you say, ‘No, I am perfect. I don’t have any blemishes on my soul. I’m not even aging—I look fertile even though I’m 55’? I wanted to tell the story of a woman who suppresses the beast inside her—and then it wakes up.”
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson make a dynamic pair. How did you cast them?
Nicole approached me about working together after seeing my first film, Instinct. She read a very early draft of Babygirl and immediately said, “I want to play that character.” She also said she wanted to surrender to it and not change a thing. That was important to me, because I knew I wrote something controversial and, at least for me, surrounded by shame. I needed someone to be as courageous as the script tries to be.
Once Nicole was on board, I woke up totally panicked. We had one of the best actors in the world. It’s impossible to find a young man who’s not only as good as her, but can dominate her. But then I saw Harris in Triangle of Sadness. He’s so vulnerable, yet so masculine and macho. He’s kind of an ideal man, because he has all of these layers.
Kidman and Dickinson in Babygirl
Photo courtesy A24
This isn’t the first film that’s come out this year featuring a significant age gap, with a female lead paired alongside a much younger man.
If we see a movie where the male actor is the same age as the female actor, we find that odd. Which is insane. It should completely be normalized that the age gaps switch and that women have different relationships. We’re not trapped in a box anymore. We internalize the male gaze, we internalize patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it. It’s really hard.
You worked with Lizzy Talbot, an intimacy coordinator who used to choreograph fight scenes. For a film that’s all about power dynamics within the context of sex, how did you approach those moments on set?
Because I was an actress, safety is my first priority at all times. I’ve experienced a lot of male directors sitting in a North Face jacket on a high chair while you’re crawling around on the floor. I’ve always felt very unsafe and just embarrassed, to be honest with you. I felt like an open wound.
You can’t do a fight without a stunt coordinator. Your actors will get hurt, and it will look lame on camera. It’s the same with sex scenes. It’s very, very useful to have someone who knows all the little tricks and makes everyone feel safe. Within the structure of a choreographed plan, the actors can let go and be totally free. Funny enough, the days with intimacy scenes are often the most clear. There are still nerves, but everybody comes to set super prepared. I wanted those scenes to feel incredibly hot and steamy and fun, but I also wanted them to be real. Sexuality is stop-and-go. It’s never like a glamour scene from a Hollywood movie in the ’90s. That’s just not how it works.
Reijn and Kidman on the Babygirl set
Courtesy A24
You made a really great Gen Z movie with Bodies Bodies Bodies. But this is a generation increasingly averse to seeing sex depicted on-screen. What do you think of that trend?
Since Bodies, I’ve been obsessed with younger generations. I used to think of myself as a hardcore feminist, but once I met these young actors, I learned so much more about what it means to be equal, to have body positivity, sex positivity, kink positivity, all those things. But, they all grew up with this device in their hand, with access to every single thing. I totally understand this reaction of, “With one press of my finger, I can see everything. Now I don’t want to see anything.”
I’m not afraid of what they’re saying. I agree with it, in a way. Sex isn’t about two bodies banging up against each other. That’s why Babygirl circles around it. There are only two quick flashes of sex acts in my movie. The rest—it might be shocking! I find it shocking, too, to go stand in a corner or eat this candy out of my hand. But it’s about the story, the imagination.
It’s important for young people to keep shining light on sexuality and anything primal, though. There’s a danger in saying, “It’s ugly. I don’t want to smell anything. I don’t want any body fluids.” We survive on human contact. The more we sit on our devices, the more depression, the more suicide. We have a task as a society to keep connecting to each other, physically and mentally.
Babygirl is in U.S. theaters on Christmas Day.
