Nicole Kidman made a rare comment about her ex-husband, Tom Cruise. While speaking with the Los Angeles Times in an interview that was published last week, the 57-year-old actress was asked whether or not she believed that Eyes Wide Shut director Stanley Kubrick was “mining” her marriage to Tom, 62, to their on-screen characters’ relationship.
“I suppose he was mining it,” Nicole told the publication. “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.”
The Undoing alum added that she recalled Stanley saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle.” Nicole also pointed out that the director “was aware” of how “one person could feel ganged up on” and “knew how to manage” that.
Upon being asked about an Eyes Wide Shut scene that took several weeks to film, Nicole explained that it featured her and Tom “smoking the spliff in bed and where [she laughs] and deliver[s] the long monologue.”
“That took many weeks,” Nicole said. “A lot of that was rehearsing in the bedroom and then him not liking what we’d done. So, we ended up reworking it, constructing it as we went along. There was no need to rush. Stanley would never go over budget. What he bought was time.”
As for how this particular scene was created, Nicole pointed out it involved “a lot of talking” between her, Tom and Stanley.
“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],” Nicole explained. “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.”
Tom and Nicole first met in 1989 while working on the film Days of Thunder. One year later, they tied the knot. During their marriage, the then-couple adopted kids Isabella and Connor Cruise. However, by 2001, Tom and Nicole split and finalized their divorce in August of that year.