Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson don’t hold back in their upcoming erotic thriller ‘Babygirl’.

How could they?

In the film, written and directed by Halina Reijn, Kidman plays the CEO of a technology company who has a very kinky affair with a much younger intern, played by Dickinson. Kidman won the best actress award at the Venice International Film Festival in August for her work in the A24 film.

Of course, when it came to the most explicit and kinky scenes in the film, an intimacy coordinator, Lizzie Talbot, helped the two along. “We had a conversation with the intimacy coordinator and then Nicole and I kind of did our own thing with it once we set the parameters of what we were both comfortable with,” Dickinson told me Friday at a “Babygirl” screening at the London West Hollywood hotel. “The intimacy coordinator says: ‘What do you feel comfortable with, what do you want as a director, what can you do based on that vision? They facilitate that and do it very subtly without interrupting the actual scene.

The evening after the screening at the Academy Museum Gala, I asked Kidman what she found most challenging about the film. She laughed, “The whole thing,” but added, “Actually, I do it justice and try to be open and raw and available every day in every way to explore.” Because of the nature of that film, it would either be completely vulnerable and exposed, or you would be protected, and then the thing wouldn’t connect. When I met Helena and we talked about it, I thought, “Just give us a safe place,” and then, “Please don’t make me look crazy.”

In one scene, Dickinson is virtually naked and dances in a hotel room to George Michael’s “Father Figure.” Reijn did not offer him rehearsals in advance. “That was just my move,” Dickinson said, laughing. “Halina put on the song and said, ‘Just dance.’ So I just had a little groove. Maybe I’ve already had a little whiskey. But it was embarrassing.”

Dickinson said he “pinched himself” every day because he was in a movie with Kidman. “I subtly kept asking her things like, ‘What was it like working with Stanley Kubrick?’ I always liked poking at the fact that she is this monolithic figure in cinema.

Kidman turned out to be anything but an aloof Hollywood star. “She is the most comforting, warm artist to work opposite,” Dickinson said. “She sets the tone on set, and she makes it so easy to be vulnerable and funny because she’s so daring. he’s so brave, and she’s doing things, and you’re like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ You can’t even imagine it.

“And she just has an innate sense of playfulness,” he continued. “And when you have that on set, everything is so simple.”