Playing it cool
Nicole Kidman has a new TV drama, but don’t expect any surprises…
Netflix
- Caroline Frost
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Back in the day, I used to imagine Dennis Waterman on the phone to his agent: “Brown leather jacket, you say? Get to drink a pint in a pub? I’m in!” It’s tempting to imagine Nicole Kidman having similar conversations with her “people” nowadays. “Ralph Lauren wardrobe? Perfect kitchen? Mystery surrounding my privileged but troubled lead character? OK, where do I sign?”
So to her latest project, the six-part Netflix drama The Perfect Couple. If you had to guess the requisite ingredients, you probably wouldn’t waver far from the dish being served: an adaptation of a New York Times bestseller about an expensive wedding on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts is all the shorthand we need for attractive, spoilt people used to causing trouble, then buying their way out of it. A champagne reception on the beach under the eye of ignored, all-seeing house staff, the civilities abruptly ruined by the discovery of a guest-turned-beautiful corpse… And we’re off, to solve murder, betrayal, what to do with 300 unwanted shrimp starters and other First World problems.
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Time was when Meryl Streep was the go-to name for elegant, complex female protagonists. Indeed, back when Kidman made her own breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm, she cited Streep as her inspiration. But the pupil has far outgunned the master. Kidman says she picks her roles without any strategy, relying on pure gut instinct. Do we believe her? If she had plotted the arc of her astonishing career she really couldn’t have planned it any better.
The Aussie star was quoted last month explaining how she had fallen in love with the long-form format with its “cinematic feel” and “slow burn”. Previously she said she was awed by the strong TV connection with an audience “because you’re in their homes”.
I have no doubt that she’s being sincere, but she could have added that it’s now the only bus to jump on for a decent actor of a certain age still wanting to explore plot and character. The sort of films “proper actors” used to appear in – Richard Gere in Internal Affairs, Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath, Kidman herself in Malice etc – don’t get made any more.
Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman in The Perfect Couple. Netflix
Instead they enjoy the multi-episode, “prestige television” treatment on a streaming service. Throw in an intelligent, beautifully dressed, enigmatic female lead, and there’s no one else in the frame if Kidman wants in. As the global ambassador for trouble in fictional paradise, she even filmed an advert for the AMC cinema chain at the height of the pandemic, featuring a line that could sum up her latest chapter of output: “Heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”
It definitely feels successful. The huge audiences for Big Little Lies (which also brought her Emmy Awards), The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers and no doubt The Perfect Couple attest to Kidman’s great nose for a project – plus how a big budget and star power can elevate what could have been, in lesser hands, pure schlock.
I’m loath to join in the scrutiny that only female actors receive for their faces – mocked for getting work, scorned for staying untouched – but it’s fair to say Kidman brings with her a rare level of audience fascination that she cleverly channels on screen, as well as running her own production company and supporting other women in an industry still horribly unequal in that regard.
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The challenge that comes with becoming the purveyor of such lucrative fare is how to escape the tropes. After decades of creative courage on the big screen, she seems content to play TV’s enigmatic ice queen these days. It means that while we may tune in for Nicole and all that she brings, we never escape properly into the peril of the piece. But hey, for both Kidman and her many alter egos, that’s really just another First World problem.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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