Leaning into the pain
From The New York Times Magazine
In the new psychological thriller miniseries The Undoing, Nicole Kidman plays Grace Fraser, a Manhattan therapist whose impeccably ordered life is suddenly shattered by violence and lust. In her stores of heat and cool, her emotional and sexual ambiguities, Grace – her name unironic, until it isn’t – is a kind of woman we’ve seen Nicole play before. A kind of woman we never tire of seeing her play, and the kind in which the 53-year-old actor keeps finding adventurous new depths. “I’ve fought that emotional intensity at times and tried to protect myself from it,” says Nicole. “Now I’m at the point where I’m like, no. Digest it. Maybe don’t even understand it. But always have it flow.”
So this question is probably too broad but – Nicole: I don’t want the light stuff. I like to get heavy quickly.
OK, great. What do you make of the relationship between you and your audience over the years?
Nicole: I probably wouldn’t have done a lot of the work I’ve done if I’d thought that out. I would have been like, “People will think I’m a complete weirdo.” That’s a frightening prospect, the idea of tempering things in relation to what people think. And of course now in society there’s an enormous amount of judgment. There has to be, as an actor, the possibility to not have it work. Sometimes it connects and people go, “I know you. I know that.” With Celeste [her Big Little Lies character who suffered domestic violence] I would walk down the street, and people wanted to hold me or protect me. The role connected me with the world in a beautiful way. But if I were attached to that, I then couldn’t go and play somebody that isn’t as relatable.
Celeste in Big Little Lies – as well as Grace in The Undoing – is a part that requires some sexual boldness, which is common for you but not many other actors at your level. Does the increased judgment you just pointed to mean boldness about
