Every single one of God’s creatures in this wine bar is looking at Nicole Kidman, who gracefully excuses herself from our shared Caesar salad to float to the bathroom. As soon as Kidman gets up, a voraciously chatty woman nearby, who has been eyeing Kidman over her husband’s shoulder, stops trash-talking her next-door neighbor midsentence. The sole waitress watches Kidman cautiously from afar. Maybe they are gazing through her translucent skin, or wondering why Nicole Kidman, celebrated movie star, is dining at a strip mall wine bar at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, or perhaps they have never before seen a citizen of Oceania, a rare demographic in Nashville that comprises .2 percent of the populace. Regardless, they are joined in watching her amble preternaturally toward the bathroom, eyes trained on her legs, because no human being walks the way Nicole Kidman walks.
Arms rigidly pressed to her sides, posture geometrically perfect, she moves at the pace of one step every two seconds, like a local deity blessing onlookers with her presence and some scattered eye contact. When Kidman says hello to the gossipmonger near us, the woman doesn’t say anything, focusing all of her energy on not imploding. She can’t eke out a single syllable while beholding Nicole Kidman, queen of 360 Bistro, empress of this West Nashville strip mall, acclaimed actor, gazelle on two legs, moving glacially about the wine bar.
“Something you need to be aware of,” begins Karyn Kusama, who directed Kidman in this fall’s Destroyer, “is that she is legitimately statuesque.”
Onscreen, Kidman delivers performances that can best be described as emotional onslaughts. Remember when she exploded in grief during Rabbit Hole? When she mauled your heart in Moulin Rouge? Her quiet agony in Dogville? Of course you do, because the odds are extremely high that you have seen her in at least one of these films, and even higher that she has appeared in a movie you have seen in the last year. If I asked you to name five actresses off the top of your head, Nicole Kidman would be one of them, probably in the top three.
This is why everybody is staring. They’re all thinking in unison, What is this person really like? I have no idea, and our interview is almost over.
The sky in Nashville is so picturesque that it must be joking — it is the bluest-blue blue. Underneath it, everything is bathed in 80-degree sunlight, including the western reach of the city, where a highway meets a strip mall and forks in two. This is not your average strip mall, but a strip mall in one of Nashville’s most affluent neighborhoods. Meaning: It has a bistro and a Pilates studio and a juice bar.
Kidman, 51, moved here after she married country-music singer (and fellow Australian) Keith Urban in 2006, and it has since become home to the couple and their two daughters. After this interview, Kidman is going to Reading Corner at one of her daughters’ schools. “It’s where you go and read books,” she explains perfectly, “and [my daughter] chooses the book the night before, and then I read it to the whole class. I act out all of the characters.”
In addition to her masterful one-woman performances at Reading Corner, Kidman’s three newest films are premiering within months of each other: The Kusama-directed Destroyer stars Kidman as detective Erin Bell, a rogue FBI agent who seeks revenge on a gang leader after he wrongs her in a big way; then there’s Boy Erased, in which Kidman stars as a staunchly religious Christian woman who sends her queer son to conversion therapy; finally, there’s Aquaman, which is the story of Aquaman (Kidman plays his aquamom).