“The Paperboy” is an adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel in which Kidman plays the sex bombshell Charlotte Bless who is obsessed with a man on the death row. Charlotte exchanges letters with the convict and starts a media investigation to find whether her friend had been wrongfully convicted. The investigation launches a chain of sexual encounters and a game of violence set in the Florida swamps.
Critics were overwhelmed by the visual imagery of a sex scene set in the prison interiors without any physical contact at all, and another scene where the heroine urinates on a man stung by jellyfish at sea to save him.
When reporters asked whether Kidman found shooting the scenes as embarrassing she replied, “Strangely no, because I think I had to step into a place to play the character where I didn’t step out of it and look at myself, so it wasn’t hard to shoot.”
I have not seen the movie, so I may be uncomfortable watching the movie, but that’s my job. It’s my job to give over to something, not to censor it, not to put my own judgments in terms of how I feel as Nicole playing the character.
“Kidman told the media that she found many rewarding roles in low-budget indie movies and did not want to be stereotyped. In fact, she revealed that due to budget constraints of the film, she had done her own hair and makeup for the role.
“I got out the fake tan and I put on lashes that were old and I … got out a hairpiece thing and it was platinum and I sort of threw it all on, I took a photo and I texted it to Lee, kind of all different provocative positions.
“That was how it started to come together, because what he sent back, which I cannot say, but it was like ‘thumbs up’.”