Nicole Kidman Is Suiting Up as a Detective for Karyn Kusama’s Crime Thriller Destroyer
Several months after making a pledge to work with a female director at least once every 18 months, Nicole Kidman is delivering. The Big Little Lies Emmy winner‘s latest project is directed by Karyn Kusama, perhaps best known for the 2000 boxing drama Girlfight and, most recently, the horror thriller The Invitation. The director’s latest film starring Kidman will also be a thriller, this time of the crime variety. Kidman will suit up as a LAPD detective who is forced to face her past when a gang leader she was placed undercover with as a rookie cop comes back into her life, as The Hollywood Reporter notes. Kidman, as Erin Bell, will have to confront the past trauma she endured during her time undercover in the California desert with the gang as, years later, she seeks legal justice and inner peace.
Dubbed Destroyer, the Kusama-helmed film is based on an original screenplay written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi — the latter of whom previously worked with the director on The Invitation — and will be produced by Fred Berger, who recently produced La La Land. “Phil and Matt have written one of the most compelling screenplays I’ve ever read, Nicole is at the top of her game — doing tremendously exciting work — and Karyn is one of the most assured voices working today,” Berger told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a powerful combination, sure to produce an iconic character, and I feel lucky to be in their company.”
Kidman’s new role comes on the heels of her powerful Emmys acceptance speech where she talked about using her acting platform to make a difference. “Sometimes when you’re acting, you get a chance to bring a bigger message – we shine a light on domestic abuse,” she said of her role as Celeste on the hit miniseries Big Little Lies. “I want my little girls to have this on their shelf and to look at it and go, ‘every time my momma didn’t put me to bed, it’s because of this. I got something.’”
It also follows Kidman’s promise during this year’s Cannes film festival where she told The Sydney Morning Herald, “It’s very much a part of my contribution now, is being able to say, pretty much every 18 months, I’m making a movie with a female director. That’s the only way the statistics are going to change— when other women start to say, ‘I’m only going to choose a woman now’. Every 18 months, there has to be a female director in the equation.” Shortly after, while promoting The Beguiled in a press conference, Kidman followed up on that statement per The Guardian by saying, “We as women have to support female directors. Hopefully it will change over time, but everybody keeps saying ‘oh it’s so different now, oh it’s so different now’, and it isn’t.”
