Nicole Kidman Got Rights to INXS’ ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ for ‘Babygirl’

Actress. Producer. Music supervisor? Nicole Kidman used her connections to make a pivotal scene happen in her new erotic thriller, Babygirl.

According to director Halina Reijn, the Oscar winner, 57, was instrumental in securing the rights to the classic INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart” for a montage scene in the new movie.

“We put it on the montage. I almost cried. My editor and I, we were screaming at each other,” Reijn explained in an interview with the “ReelBlend Podcast” on Friday, December 27. “The next day, I called [movie studio] A24 and I said, ‘OK, we need to get the rights to this song.’ They said no. They said it was a hard no. And I didn’t sleep for a week. I tried every other song that I could think of. Nothing worked.”

That’s when Reijn reached out to her lead actress, who managed to pull a few strings.

“And then I called Nicole, just because we became so close. I was just like, ‘I’m so depressed.’ And she said, ‘Give me a couple of days.’ And she did it,” Reijn said. “She got the rights. She got to the real people and she did it for us. Amazing.”

In Babygirl, Kidman plays a high-powered CEO who begins a steamy affair with a young intern played by Harris Dickinson.

The film’s director recently defended the 29-year age gap between her two stars. (Dickinson is 28.)

In an interview with W magazine published on Wednesday, December 25, Reijn was asked about adding to the pantheon of romantic movies released this year that feature an older woman and a younger man (including Kidman’s A Family Affair and the Anne Hathaway–starring The Idea of You).

“If we see a movie where the male actor is the same age as the female actor, we find that odd. Which is insane. It should completely be normalized that the age gaps switch and that women have different relationships,” Reijn said. “We’re not trapped in a box anymore. We internalize the male gaze, we internalize patriarchy, and we need to free ourselves from it. It’s really hard.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published earlier this month, Kidman recalled being shocked by one early review of Babygirl.

“I think it’s very releasing, this film. I hope it is,” she said. “I’ve had some people say it’s the most disturbing film they’ve ever seen, which I’m like, ‘Oh, no, I’m so sorry.’”

For her part, Kidman relished the opportunity to play an older woman who embraced her sensual side.

“A lot of times women are discarded at a certain period of their career as a sexual being. So, it was really beautiful to be seen in this way,” the Oscar winner told THR. “From the minute I read it, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is a voice I haven’t seen, this is a place that I haven’t been, I don’t think audiences have been.’ My character has reached a stage where she’s got all this power, but she’s not sure who she is, what she wants, what she desires, even though she seems to have it all. And I think that’s really relatable.”