London — Earlier than being forged in Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” Harris Dickinson had by no means labored in an workplace. He’d carried out retail and hospitality earlier than changing into an actor however wasn’t totally ready to play Samuel, an intern at a New York Metropolis tech firm who turns into embroiled in a bootleg affair with its chief govt, Romy (Nicole Kidman). To arrange, he frolicked in a trend workplace and went into A24, the place the movie truly shot a lot of its scenes.
“I’ve never been in that world,” Dickinson remembers. “I’d done all types of jobs before I started acting, but the office environment was not one of them, so I really didn’t have a clue. There’s a romanticism to it. Acting has such a weird structure, whereas the office is so structured and so contained and very clear. There was a sexiness to it for me.”
Regardless of that tangible preparation, Samuel held “an element of mystique” for Dickinson, who created his personal backstory for the character. When he was approached by Reijn in regards to the function, Dickinson was unsure as a result of Samuel appeared so untethered and undefinable. A lot about him was left unsaid within the script, a undeniable fact that was each intriguing and terrifying.
“I was fascinated by the writing and the character because I didn’t really know what I would do with it,” Dickinson says. “It scared me a little bit, in the sense of ‘I don’t know how exactly best to do this in a way that’s going to elevate the rest of the story.’ But I guess that’s why it eventually led me to do it.”
As soon as he received on set with Kidman, a lot of that concern dissipated. A scene the place Samuel dances shirtless to George Michael in a resort room was daunting, actually, however the actor says he had no selection however to embrace the second. The movie incorporates lengthy, uncomfortable scenes between Samuel and Romy, by which they discover the ability dynamics of their sexuality and confront their very own boundaries. The actors received assist from an intimacy coordinator, and Reijn inspired a way of freedom, permitting scenes to play out in a method that felt boundless to Dickinson.
“We would do scenes where there were no rules. Ultimately, it’s about two people dealing with the present moment more than anything. [It’s about] their confrontation with their own ideals and desires. So you start seeing [a scene] in one way, and then it goes in a different way, and then it ends in an extremely different way.”
— Harris Dickinson
“We would do scenes where there were no rules,” he says of the shoot. “Ultimately, it’s about two people dealing with the present moment more than anything. [It’s about] their confrontation with their own ideals and desires. So you start seeing [a scene] in one way, and then it goes in a different way, and then it ends in an extremely different way.”
If that sounds intense, it was. But it surely was additionally immensely gratifying — the principle purpose Dickinson says he grew to become an actor.
“It wasn’t a rigid environment at all,” he says. “That creates something quite loose and playful on set. It manufactures something more interesting, rather than if there are really strict or scary environments, which can sometimes be the case.”
Samuel toys with the extent of management between him and Romy, usually forcing her into conditions which can be surprising. Dickinson needed to play Samuel with a real air of uncertainty. It’s a relationship that pays homage to iconic erotic thrillers whereas undercutting what’s anticipated from the style in a method that forces the viewer to confront conceptions about gender, energy and intercourse. Dickinson describes his character as somebody who is just “wading around in his own mess.”
“He fronts as an assured individual, and other times he seems completely unstable,” says Harris Dickinson of his character in “Babygirl,” which co-stars Nicole Kidman.
(Niko Tavernise/A24)
“He fronts as an assured individual, and other times he seems completely unstable,” the actor says. “He’s just a young man trying to figure out what his masculinity means. Sometimes he wants Romy in a very simplistic way, and that’s what he’ll get. And then there are other times where it feels like he’s using it as his own experiment to understand himself and understand his desires.”
Earlier than capturing “Babygirl,” Dickinson took on a small function in Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” as a firefighter battling the aftermath of the German air raids throughout World Warfare II. He needed to work with McQueen, in addition to star Saoirse Ronan, with whom he’d beforehand co-starred in “See How They Run.” “I thought it was important, even if it was a small role,” he says. “I just pop in and out of it, but it was fun to be a part of a bigger canvas.”
(Oliver Mayhall/For The Instances)
Dickinson additionally just lately accomplished his directorial debut, which he shot in England over the summer time. The as-yet-untitled movie is about towards the backdrop of homelessness within the U.Okay., and it’s a narrative Dickinson has been creating for greater than 5 years. In actual fact, he needed to direct earlier than he ever needed to behave, regardless of constructing a powerful profession on movie and TV in such award-nominated initiatives as “Triangle of Sadness,” “The Iron Claw” and “A Murder at the End of the World.”
“As I started to get older and act, I realized I was suppressing that desire to make stuff as well,” he notes. “It was there, bubbling away. I love being on film sets. I love being a tiny piece of the puzzle as an actor. But I also have a huge desire to be the one building the puzzle.”
