When it comes to Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's marriage—the book is closed. But, her memories of shooting Eyes Wide Shut remain.
As fans can recall, the former husband and wife co-starred in Stanley Kubrick's final film before his death, which was released in 1999 after years of shooting. Meanwhile, the pair—who played a married couple in the film's turbulent story—announced their separation in 2001 after a decade of marriage and adopting two children together, Isabella and Connor. It's been nearly another decade since and both stars have gone their very separate ways with Kidman marrying Keith Urban and welcoming two daughters with the country musician while Cruise has since married and split from Katie Holmes, sharing 14-year-old Suri.
Despite their history, Kidman can still remember their happier times, including—according to her—while shooting that film. During an interview with The New York Times, she was asked about the potential impact those roles may have had on them as real-life husband and wife.
"You know how in Eyes Wide Shut you have that monologue in which your character is talking about infidelity and says to Tom's character, 'I was ready to give up everything'? That speech is all about emasculation and emotional aggression," the interviewer asked. "If you're acting those scenes with the person to whom you're married, and doing it as part of this immersive process, can it open up negative feelings that later you maybe wish you hadn't opened?"
In response, Kidman said, "That fits the narrative that people came up with, but I definitely didn't see it like that."
"We were happily married through that," she further confirmed. "We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We'd rent out a place and go racing at 3 in the morning. I don't know what else to say. Maybe I don't have the ability to look back and dissect it. Or I'm not willing to."
It's not often that the actress discusses her past relationship with Cruise, but in the interview, she did share more behind-the-scenes memories from their work together with Kubrick and assure readers it was not a bad time.
"This is where the fallacy is: We loved working with him," she said. "We shot that for two years. We had two kids and were living in a trailer on the lot primarily, making spaghetti because Stanley liked to eat with us sometimes. We were working with the greatest filmmaker and learning about our lives and enjoying our lives on set."
While they wouldn't have called the process weird, "We would say, 'When is it going to end?' We went over there thinking it was going to be three months. It turned into a year, a year and a half," she acknowledged. "But you go, As long as I surrender to what this is, I'm going to have an incredible time. Stanley, he wasn't torturous. He was arduous in that he would shoot a lot. But I'd sit on the floor of his office and talk, and we'd watch animal videos. He said animals were so much nicer than human beings. Though I do remember we were watching a wildlife thing where you saw the lion going after an antelope, and he could hardly watch it. Interesting, isn't it?"