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Q&A with Halina Reijn and Nicole Kidman

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Babygirl.

A lot of people have talked about the content of this film being edgy and subversive, but it’s actually a pretty sweet story about self-acceptance. Can you talk diving into that idea?
Halina Reijn: For me, that’s core of the film. There was a question that I wanted to ask myself. Is it possible to love all the different parts of yourself? Not just the ones that we like to present to each other or the outside world, but also the parts that are darker and more shameful and that make you nervous. And so that was the core question that we had with this movie.

everything becomes performative.

And why did you choose this particular story to explore that?
HR: Well, I also wanted to make it light and not too self-serious or pretentious. I started to play with a tone that was maybe a comedy of manners, maybe a little bit of a fairy tale and fable. Then I thought it would be fun to have a woman who was very powerful, and a young man who was trying to find his way as a man, because for me it’s also very much about masculinity and not only femininity. I had the idea that he would be her intern, that he would dominate her sexually, because I thought that was a fun sort of twist and hook. Something that was also in conversation was the sexual thrillers of the 90s. I love those films, but I always felt in the end someone was punished, or killed or died, and I didn’t want that for this story. I love to show that everybody’s human and we’re all ambiguous. We all have a beast in us and an angel.

Romy is such a complex character, and it feels like much of that is held under the surface. Your performance is somehow very controlled and very uninhibited at the same time. How did you connect with the character?
Nicole Kidman: Just the minute I heard it was called Babygirl, I was like, I want to play Babygirl! I knew of Helena’s work. I sort of seek out women to work with and support. There are up-and-coming directors who are either starting or restarting their careers. We were already talking about things because she was writing something else for me.

Then I heard she was writing Babygirl, and she hadn’t mentioned it to me. But then it appeared and as soon as I read it, I was completely absorbed. I called and her and went, Oh my god, please, can I do this with you? My husband happens to have a “babygirl” tattoo on the back of his neck, so that seems to be destiny!

I just understood it and I understood that it was also fun, that it was sexy, that there was so many different things it was circling. We talked about it and bonded over it. I told Halina that I was in her hands, in her world, in her playground, and let’s go. From that point on, we were kind of joined. What’s beautiful is that when you work with a director who’s also the writer, they start to write for you, they rewrite it, they shape it, they change it, and it sort of morphed along the way. Even when we were filming, she would be working at night. She’d come in the next morning and ask, how about this? Or late night at night after we’d finished, I’d call her and ask, What about this, or I’m feeling this. She would absorb it, and then we’d explore that the next day. We had a limited budget, we were trying to shoot so many scenes, and she’s relentless. We had an amazing crew and an amazing cinematographer. If it started raining, we’d shoot in the rain. Whatever it was, we would adapt.

HR: That was also incredible for me! We were sometimes shooting in the streets, and the cinematographer is Jasper Wolf, he’s Dutch. He loves to improvise, and he thinks that he shot this movie in the Amazon [laughs]. He’s very much an adventurer. I’m not at all! But he’s very hands-on. While we were shooting in the street, like you said, it was raining, remember? And then you [Nicole] went into this taxi!

NK: I flagged a cab and got in the cab in the scene. And the guy was looking at me.

HR: Because it was a real cab!

NK: And I had no money on me! I’m like, I need to find my wallet. The production can’t afford it [laughs]. It was just that kind of filmmaking experience. It’s so alive and that I think is what you capture. So that’s probably what you feel and see on the screen. Even seeing that set piece for the song Father Figure… we had the hotel room for the day. That’s it. Halina had written a structure to it, but she was like, I still want you to find things. And it was a constant discovery and exploration, which is really exciting as an actor. At the same time, so many of the scenes were so structured. So many of them had a rhythm of the dialogue and the back and forth of the game they were playing, and who had such a strong grasp of the power. When it starts, how it starts, when the power shifts, it was all extremely thought-out ahead of time. And hopefully it’s funny. I found it very funny! Among other things.

HR: The system that we created with each other, with the actors, was that we wanted to be very prepared. Everyone learned their lines very well. We talked in detail about the blocking and the choreography, so everyone felt confident and safe. And then, you can let it go in the moment and be open to whatever they bring, to really collaborate in the moment. Because of course the tension between Romy and Samuel for me is electrifying. That’s because we were so prepared. Only then, can you totally let go. They have these long scenes—the mentor meetings in this kind of basement office room. These are very long takes with a lot of dialogue. The scene in the hotel room was very long too. We built that in the studio and it was only me, Nicole, Harris, and Jasper the DP in there. We prepared that very well, and then we just did huge takes, like a theater play. I come from the theater, so that’s all I know. I like to look at it as a play. You get so much if you get to do the whole thing. They were excellent—you need very, very talented actors. What we had found with the tone was that “everything is performance.”  This woman has this feeling that she needs to be a good mother, a good wife, a good leader, a good lover. And everything becomes performative. And we kind of wanted to show that almost breaking through the fourth wall when Harris, for instance, says, Get on your knees, and then Romy is like, Oh, sorry. She’s going in and out of it, so it almost shows that Romy is acting. And that I think they did that exceptionally well. That’s where the humor and the humanity comes from for me.

NK: Because a lot of times with sexuality in film, the way in which it’s done, it’s all so perfect. And we wanted to show it’s real. And so that’s why Halina would sometimes say, if you feel like laughing, then laugh. So there’s an awkwardness, because rarely does someone enter into a sexual game and it’s all perfect and you know exactly how to behave. It’s awkward. You’re finding your way and then suddenly before you know it, you’re overcome with what hits you, and then you’re not, and then you are. That messiness of it is hard to capture on film. There are exceptions. I mean, sure, with Cassavetes, when you look at Gena Rowlands and her performances, it was beautiful how he would capture her, but it’s difficult. Having a woman direct you as a woman in this, it’s very safe. I felt like she was there to protect me and take care of me, and I knew I wouldn’t be put in a position where I felt dominated or like I didn’t have any power. Halina made it safe for all of us as actors, because she’s been an actor. She’s been on stage, she’s been in films, she knows the process, and she knows what you start to feel. Some days we’d come in and we’d be like, okay, what next? And she could perform it for you. We wouldn’t necessarily do exactly what she did, but she would share ideas. She would be crawling around on the floor! That’s the beauty of having someone who completely understands the material.

HR: Acting for me always felt it was so vulnerable. It can be embarrassing. Even if you’re doing a comedy scene, everybody’s just standing there with their North Face jackets, like, what is she going to do now? Meanwhile you’re crawling around. I think it would be helpful for me if I was acting and the director was like, okay, get on the floor. It’s not a method everyone should use, but it’s my language, to be the one of the floor first. So the actors feel like we are in this together. Because it can be quite humiliating as a profession. You feel like a clown that has to dance for everyone, and that’s not a nice feeling! If you do it together, it’s easier to go into vulnerable places, and then you can use those nerves, use that shame, use them in the scene and make it a weapon.

Q&A with Halina Reijn

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Bodies Bodies Bodies.

How did your experience in the industry as an actress influence your approach to this film?

Halina Reijn: Yeah, I used to be an actress, mostly on stage. I was in a theater company and lived in Amsterdam. It was all consuming, but in the wings I was always thinking how I might want to do my own thing. I directed Instinct, which was a very different film than this one. It was based on a true story about a therapist that falls in love with a rapist that she’s treating in jail, kind of like Fifty Shades of Grey gone dark. Then I helped create a show about sex work in Amsterdam, and then A24 sent me the original script for this film and we began to talk. To me, the big thing in that script was the game. There was a killer in that script, and there were a lot of things going on, and I said, well I’m an arthouse director, I’m not sure if a slasher film makes sense. But then I saw this wave and was like, what if it’s not a killer but it’s all about young behavior and what if it’s more like Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies. And A24 was totally open to it and we hired the playwright Sarah DeLappe who lives here in New York and wrote the play Wolves. I was obsessed by that play. It’s centered around young girls who play on a soccer team and how they all talk to each other. The language is amazing but all the characters have such distinct voices and I thought, I need to work with her. That was how we began to craft what you saw today.

what if it’s more like Mean Girls meets Lord of the Flies

I was impressed by how inclusive this film was from the very opening scene with the two young women kissing. It’s something natural that should have been seen as normal a long time ago, but it wasn’t.  

HR: So much has changed, also as an actress. There have been huge shifts, even for me as a woman to get the opportunity to direct in this way is very special. Within this film specifically, I hope that we were inclusive in our casting. We wanted to make sure that with the queer characters in this film, their storylines weren’t about their queerness… it was just there. Some of them are queer, and some of them are messy characters, some are manipulative and others are more innocent, and their orientation is unrelated to all that. I feel like there’s a huge shift taking place but there’s still a lot of work to do. Especially with a slasher film. There are archetypes of the innocent girl and the beautiful girl and the evil guy, and we really wanted to transcend those traditions and make all the characters many things at once, light and dark. Even though this film is a fun roller coaster, the darker theme is the beast inside or outside of you, and I believe that is inside all of us.

How did you assemble the cast?

HR: Amandla Stenberg was the first one to sign on. I am a total collaborator; I was born into a commune and all I know is people doing everything together. With the cast, since I am older and making a film about young people, it was really important for me to get them on board and know that it wouldn’t just be me telling them what to do. With Amandla, she’s also an EP on the film. With her activism and her queerness and her talent, I really wanted her to really come on board and collaborate. I was so eager to get her. The first meeting was magical and I was so in awe of her intelligence. Then I was sure I wanted Pete [Davidson] and people were like “really?” and then A24 was like, “okay, if you want him, sure.” My thing with Pete is that even though he’s done a lot of comedy, I wanted to go into darkness with him. I wanted to show another side of his acting. We also needed someone who, despite a short amount of screen time, would really be that character and have that energy. Myha’la [Herrold] I chased because I had seen Industry and she was classically trained, so I felt a strong connection there. She would be responsible for the whole story, and not just her own. And then Maria Bakalova, I was amazed after seeing her in Borat and thought, who is this creature, this strange force of nature? Everyone else came through Zoom auditions, and I have so much respect for how challenging that must have been.

Can you talk about working with your Cinematographer?

HR: Our DP, Jasper Wolf—see Monos if you haven’t already—he jumps right in with the cast. He’s like a war photographer and likes that kind of dynamic. I worked with him on Instinct, but that took place in prison so we wanted it to be more static. But for this, I told him we need to go back to his core style. It was important that the big group scenes didn’t feel forced or staged or stiff. The actors didn’t know each other, it was Covid, we couldn’t tell them to go out for a night and have fun together. We could only rehearse in very specific spaces. That was really challenging. As the filmmakers, we felt it was important to create an organic feel to the film, like we’re right there with them and it’s very sensual and sexual and animalistic. So we developed that kind of style. Because we see so many of the killings as they take place, I wanted Jasper and the camera to be part of the group behavior, as a witness. Cassavetes was a big inspiration for that, loose and spontaneous. I told the actors that we’re not going to use the word “coverage,” we’re never going to plan to shoot one person and you’re never going to know where he’s going to be but he’ll feel you. As an actor, that’s kind of thrilling. You have to be alert at all times. Because I’m an actor myself, I wanted to create conditions where they feel it a little bit.

I originally thought this film might be a commentary on a generation, but I actually think it’s a commentary on the viewer.

HR: I agree. I don’t want to be overly pretentious or heavy or about this film, but we do try to say something about human nature. What I like about it is that we can do that in a very contemporary way. The film speaks about group behavior and whether it’s in the Middle Ages or now or the beginning of time, group behavior has always been there. We have a very primal need to belong. I arrived here in New York during Covid and I have never felt so lonely in my life, it was horrible. I could identify with Bee, who wanted to be seen and heard. She tries to make a joke, no one gets it. To me, that’s the heart of the film. But, there is this Gen Z theme that is totally fascinating. I think it’s interesting at any time to get a group of people together that are fresh out of college, and who now need to become grown-ups. And then we incorporate technology and ask what it does to intimacy. That’s why we start the film with “I love you” and a second later they’re on their phones. I don’t want to make fun of the generation… I admire them. When I used to have a panic attack before going on stage, I would hide out of fear. These actors come on set and are like, I had six panic attacks this morning because of this thing that happened! And they have the words to face these things and acknowledge them, while not being ashamed of them. I am in awe of this generation, but I also think it’s important for us all, in every generation, to be able to make fun of ourselves.