Actress Nicole Kidman has played a number of roles that are heavy and lean into dramatic territory. The actress played the role of noted classic author Virginia Woolf in the semi-biography The Hours, which fetched her the Oscar for Best Actress. The actress has also played strong characters in films such as Rabbit Hole, Lion, and Dogville.
Despite her experience with emotionally heavy roles on film, one scene was reportedly too much for the Boy Erased star. Kidman reportedly could not perform authentically for a particularly disturbing scene in the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series Expats, which focused on expatriates in Hong Kong.
Nicole Kidman In Lulu Wang’s Expats
Actress Nicole Kidman starred in the upcoming drama series Expats, which is directed by Lulu Wang. Wang is known for directing the independent dramas The Farewell and Posthumous. Based on the novel by Hong Kong American author Janice YK Lee called The Expatriates, the series follows a community of expatriates in Hong Kong who deal with a tragedy.
Kidman played the lead role of Margaret, who deals with the loss of her youngest child. She stars along with actors such as Ji-young Yoo, Sarayu Blue, Jack Huston, Brian Tee, and Flora Chan. The series interacts with other expatriates and immigrants from other parts of the world and the privileges that different communities enjoy in the country. It reportedly also deals with the temporary nature of an immigrant in a foreign State.
Nicole Kidman, who had done TV before in shows such as Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, categorized Expats as a different kind of a show. She said in an interview with The Guardian,
“A very different piece of television, this. It’s a slow burn. I feel it’s more aligned to, say, Kieślowski with Dekalog, or Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage…There’s a selfishness to grief that Lulu didn’t shy away from, along with the selfishness in relation to being an expat, in relation to being a privileged woman.”
The upcoming series is all set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video on January 26, with Lulu Wang writing and directing the first episode of the series.
Also read: Val Kilmer Was Miserable During His Scenes With Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever
Nicole Kidman Could Not Perform One Disturbing Scene In The Series
The cast of the show Expats reportedly filmed the series in 2021, when there were still COVID restrictions imposed on travel and work. The series was shot in Hong Kong where quarantine rules were reportedly stringent, especially when it came to the entry of international flights. However, Nicole Kidman reportedly flew in on a private jet and was away from her family throughout the shoot.
Nicole Kidman mentioned that at one point during filming, the lack of her family being with her to ground her impacted her ability to perform a disturbing scene. She mentioned in the interview that performing the scene where she loses her youngest child was so disturbing that she refused to film it. She said,
“I said, ‘I cannot, cannot do this’. It was like when a donkey just goes, ‘I’m not going’. I was alone in Hong Kong without my family, which was a terrible mistake. I couldn’t just get on a plane and get to them. And they couldn’t get to me. That affected the performance, to the degree that it also affected my psyche.”
Kidman also mentioned that she believed many of the audiences looked up to the actors to perform real issues with authenticity and when an actor cannot afford to fail at that. She said,
“I think: people go through this, my job is to be the conduit and perform it to its absolute authentic truth. And if I’m not doing that, then I’m not serving why I work as an actor, which is to artistically connect to the way life is, in all its pain and glory.”
Nicole Kidman has played emotionally heavy roles before, with her role in the film Rabbit Hole dealing with a similar loss of a child. She also won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Virginia Woolf in her final days in the film The Hours.
