As Nicole Kidman celebrates 25 years since Eyes Wide Shut, she’s looking back on making the film with her co-star and then-husband Tom Cruise.
The Oscar winner remembered collaborating with writer/director Stanley Kubrick and “just a lot of talking” as they spent weeks rehearsing one memorable scene of the couple having an intimate conversation over a joint in their bedroom.
“When Tom and I first started with Stanley, it was at his home, and we didn’t even go over to the sets at Pinewood [Studios],” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Six, eight weeks passed, and we’re wondering, ‘Are we ever going to start?’ And we just wouldn’t start. We were getting comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to throw out ideas. For that scene, we improvised the beginning of it through the rehearsals.”
Kidman was married to Cruise from 1990 to 2001, during which they filmed Kubrick’s final movie from 1996 to 1998, after a long rehearsal period. She thinks the director found inspiration in their marriage while working on the scene.
“I suppose he was mining it,” said Kidman. “There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions. But he had a strong sense of the story he was telling. I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle.’ Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us.”
The Australian-American actress clarified she never felt ganged up on, “But there’s something about being a woman in that equation, too. And Stanley liked women. He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character.”
Kidman previously talked about the movie in a 2017 interview with Deadline, saying how thankful she was to have a “slightly zen approach to things” during the long shoot. “Because I was married and I had my kids there. It wasn’t like I was rushing to get finished, to get somewhere else. I was there, with Stanley, and I didn’t care. Whatever,” she said.
Kubrick died of a heart attack at 70 on March 7, 1999, just days after showing a final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to his family and the film’s stars.
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