“Babygirl” star Harris Dickinson dished on how he and his co-star Nicole Kidman freestyled some of their steamy sex scenes in their new erotic thriller with the help of an intimacy coordinator.
“We’d have a discussion with the intimacy coordinator and then Nicole and I kind of did our own thing with it once we set the parameters of what we were both comfortable with,” Dickinson told Variety in an interview published Wednesday.
“The intimacy coordinator is saying, ‘What are you comfortable with, what do you want as a director, what are you comfortable doing from that vision?’ They’re facilitating that and doing it very delicately without interrupting the actual scene.”
Kidman chimed in during the interview, admitting she felt the most challenging part of making the film was “actually doing it justice and trying to be open and raw and available each day in every which way to explore.”
“Because the nature of that film, it was either going to be completely vulnerable and exposed, or you were going to be protected, and then the thing wouldn’t connect.”
The “Big Little Lies” star continued, “When I met with [Director Halina Reijn], and we talked through it, I was just like, ‘Just give us a safe space,’ and then, ‘Please don’t make me look like a fool.’”
Kidman stars in the film as a high-powered CEO who gets into an affair with a much-younger man played by Dickinson.
The new interview comes shortly after Kidman opened up about the film’s sexual nature, telling the Sun earlier this week that she nearly experienced “burnout” from having to fake orgasms so many times on camera.
“There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to [imitate] orgasm any more,’” the 57-year-old actress said.
She continued, “Don’t come near me. I hate doing this. I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life!”
Kidman went on to say that being “so present all the time” during the sex scenes became so taxing that it was “almost burnout” for her.
Eventually, she started to feel “over it.”