We need to stop waiting to be chosen by men”: behind the scenes of Babygirl

Harris Dickinson plays a horny intern. Nicole Kidman’s a sexually repressed CEO. You can guess the rest. We asked Dickinson and director Halina Reijn about how it all came together – no pun intended.

When it came to shooting Babygirl, Dutch director Halina Reijn’s new erotic thriller, Nicole Kidman was on board from the beginning.

Kidman plays Romy, the high-flying CEO of a robotics company who seemingly has it all: the career, the hot husband (played by Antonio Banderas), two well-adjusted kids and a beautiful Manhattan apartment and a second home upstate. The catch? Romy’s husband has never given her an orgasm. After sex, she waits until he’s fallen asleep to get herself off next door, watching porn. What Romy craves the most, it seems, are things that are antithetical to her life: erotic domination and release, both sexual and from the always-in-control image she projects in the office. Then, she meets Harris Dickinson’s character Samuel, a fresh-faced intern at the company who taps into her darkest desires after just a few days on the job. Romy’s life, then, splits wide open.

It was Kidman who first got in touch with Reijn, after watching her first feature, the 2019 drama Instinct. “[Kidman is] someone who is so impressive and who actually does what she claims: support women by finding movies in little corners of the world,” Reijn says, curled up on the sofa in a plush central London hotel room. She saw it and immediately said, We need to work together’.”

Before Babygirl, Reijn also directed Bodies Bodies Bodies, the polarising 2022 horror comedy, in which characters played by Amandla Stendberg, Rachel Sennott and Myha’la turn on each other after a dimwitted boyfriend, played by Pete Davison, is mysteriously killed. Following its release, Reijn was dead-set on writing her own film (Sarah DeLappe penned the script for Bodies), specifically about female liberation – a theme she’d been obsessed with since her early days as an actor, playing parts that focused on surrender and control. She had the Babygirl title and an early draft ready to go. After Kidman read it, the decision was made quickly: she would be the film’s titular babygirl.

Kidman and Reijn have since developed a close relationship, having bonded over their shared feelings of what sexual freedom looks like for a successful woman. It just so happens that Romy, in this case, falls in love with a much younger man, who is also her employee, and orders her milk from the bar at after-work drinks (that’s a true story from Reijn’s own life, mind you).

My hope for the future is that younger generations have different, more positive ideas about sex,” Reijn says. I also wanted to examine my own behaviour here. I’m 49 and a pure product of patriarchy, even though I was raised by hippies. I used to have long black hairs on my body, and I thought they were beautiful. I didn’t read magazines or watch TV. Then you walk into society and it’s like, You look like a grizzly bear, you look horrible!’

So you feel like you have to make yourself smaller, smaller, to be this perfect object of desire,” she continues. But what do desire? I just wanted to be desired. It’s a total mindfuck. We need to stop waiting to be chosen by men.”

Fundamentally, Babygirl is about what Reijn calls the beast” within. As a woman, can you accept that you have a beast inside you at all, or do you push it all down in favour of appearing respectable – normal, even? Does it make sense to enjoy sexual submission if you’re a smart, dominant leader in every other aspect of your life? I get confused by all this,” Reijn admits.

Samuel the intern, meanwhile is straight-talking and aloof, unintimidated by company hierarchy. He seduces Romy, tugging at the strands of stilted shame inside of her until they come undone. Both of them are rattled by their shared chemistry, and what follows is a vulnerable and slightly dangerous affair. It’s touching as well as transgressive – at least in Romy’s world of self-imposed rules. On paper, this reads as an abuse of power; on screen, things are much, much murkier.

There were times when Nicole and I would just laugh, which was key to unlocking a scene because you can let your embarrassment be real”

Harris Dickinson

Harris Dickinson tells me he related to Samuel as a guy searching for identity in many different forms, trying to figure out who he is and how to be, how to act, how to present himself as a man in society.

That’s relatable for any guy,” says Dickinson, sitting in a different, albeit no less plush. room in the same hotel as Reijn. There’s a certain amount of honesty to [Sam], which I respected. He’s so direct and unafraid.”

As for the sex scenes – Babygirl is rated 18 – Dickinson drew on his general sense of embarrassment that comes with, you know, being alive. I think that kind of embarrassment was actually quite helpful for those scenes,” he says, because Samuel and Romy were going through that as well. They’re performing and not understanding how to be with one another, how to navigate their complex relationship.

There were times when Nicole and I would just laugh, which was key to unlocking a scene because you can let your embarrassment be real. It’s weird to put that on display for people on a film set, but it was a great environment to be in.”

Preparation was key,” Reijn says of filming the sex scenes. Everything was choreographed, we had an amazing intimacy co-ordinator, everyone knew exactly where they were going to touch each other and when, so that in the moment, they could feel free. That’s when the electricity happens.”

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But you might be surprised to hear that Reijn wasn’t all that interested in the physical sex scenes compared to the psychological aspect of Romy and Samuel’s affair: the assignments, the games, the playfulness. In order to create this atmosphere, Dickinson and Kidman were careful not to get to know each other too well. They purposefully didn’t over-rehearse and jointly decided they’d get better results without knowing details about one another’s personal lives. Having only ever worked in retail and hospitality jobs before acting, Dickinson was unfamiliar with the grad scheme-esque, corporate lifestyle. He tried (and failed – blame that unforgiving schedule) to get an internship in an office. The next best thing: getting the low-down from A24 and Condé Nast employees between shoots.

Whether Reijn has released herself from sexual suppression as a result of making Babygirl remains to be seen. I haven’t had time!” she laughs. That being said, the experience has been healing and cathartic for the director. She puts her own shame on display in the film, providing a cautionary tale about what happens when you suppress yourself, sexually or otherwise, and asking complicated questions about gender roles.

It’s as much a movie about femininity as it is about masculinity,” Reijn says. What do men desire? Does that make him more or less of a man? What does it even mean to be a man? In the film, Samuel is partly asking for permission to try stuff out. From that comes a lot of humour – and a lot of humanity.”

Babygirl is out in cinemas now

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