Nicole Kidman, 'The White Lotus' and Other Gay Madlibs
And why we can’t stop forcing celebrities to feed the viral content making machine.
You’d almost feel bad for her if she wasn’t… well, Nicole Kidman. There’s a thing that happens these days within the “give them a microphone, call them a journalist” economy that’s mid-boom in which the interviewer tries to find the center of the Venn diagram between the talent they are interviewing and a cultural moment. It’s an algebra of sorts in trying to see if you can find the optimal value in colliding two powerful equations.
That’s how you wind up with TikToker Harry Daniels asking celebs if they’d rather have a “gay son or thot daughter” at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards. But it’s not just them. Lady Gaga was recently asked about “reheating her nachos,” and went viral with her response. I spent Monday morning at an 18th century mansion that used to belong to the late Karl Lagerfeld asking Jamie Dornan and Jessica Gunning about whose nachos they’d want to reheat. This to say: I’m both identifying, scolding and admitting to being part of the problem. How cheeky!
On Monday, PopCrave, as major a news outlet as the New York Times for many, pulled a quote from an IndieWire interview that Nicole Kidman did on the red carpet at the South by Southwest premiere of her new film, Holland, in which she was asked about The White Lotus.
Without context, it might seem like this was information offered up by Kidman, unprompted. It spurred its own reaction cycle in which some indicated their desire to see her spearhead an Aussie-set Season 4, while others noted that “if you’re a real fan of either person and what you really want is a Nicole Kidman/Mike White collaboration, you should want him to write a Beatriz at Dinner or Enlightened or Year of the Dog for her, not just get her on The White Lotus.”
I don’t blame the IndieWire journalist here in attempting to get Nicole Kidman to weigh in on one of Hollywood’s hottest topics (Jennifer Aniston, James Marsden, Sheryl Lee Ralph and others have waded in this water before), but it is quite random. Kidman has never worked with White and has no surface connection to him or The White Lotus other than the fact that her Netflix series The Perfect Couple was often compared to the show and the fact that her hit series Big Little Lies is also HBO homosexual catnip. But these are similarities, dotted lines at best, and really serve to show that this was just asking one popular thing about another popular thing and, in doing so, creating a third popular thing. And it worked!
There’s not really a solution to all of this, nor is there necessarily a problem. And if there is a problem, I’m very much a part of it. And if there is a problem and I’m a part of it and I’m attempting to own that, I’m not sure it exonerates me from the repercussions of essentially gamifying interviews in an attempt to win the Internet. Why I don’t necessarily view it as a problem is because I’m not sure if the alternative serves a better purpose. If IndieWire had asked her a question about Holland and she gave a routine actor-ly answer, we surely wouldn’t be talking about it right now. And while we’re not talking about the film, still, we are talking about Nicole Kidman, who is currently starring in Holland, a film whose title has thus far been mentioned three times in this story. It’s not an ineffective strategy, even if it’s not the most direct route. Perhaps, though, it’s the most scenic.
A lot is currently being written about the celebrity interview ecosystem. “Entertainment journalism, even at a legacy publication as revered as Vanity Fair, is getting more and more unserious,” wrote Kathleen Newman-Bremang in a recent story for Refinery29, chronicling a recent controversy that erupted after a cringe interview between Hannah Berner and Megan Thee Stallion went viral online for all the wrong reasons.
“Outrage is currency. A hit clip at all costs… The bigger problem here is that journalists are being encouraged to behave like influencers, and all outlets are prioritizing clicks — and popularity — over quality interviews.”
And therein lies the rub and a better analysis of the Nicole Kidman moment. It’s not an attack or even a criticism of the journalist but rather pointing out the ways in which the new currency favors all, influencer or journalist, to behave in an entirely new way. It also approximates them to one another in a way that lends credibility to the influencer and takes away from the journalist.
Again, I’m not bummed about discourse that involves Nicole Kidman and The White Lotus — two of my favorite topics — but I do think this is an instance where our desire for something has overtaken reality. We were given an inch and from it found a mile. Harmless in a situation such as this, but it fortells something grim ahead in relenting to the idea that “all press is good press.” It’s also going to lead to even more caginess from celebrities who are increasingly, from my perspective, feeling bated into saying things. “I have the feeling that people are starting to get tired of seeing and knowing everything,” Robert Pattinson said in a recent interview.
“I think we're going to go back in the other direction, towards this idea that stars should have a bit of mystique, or at least a hint of mystery.”
Perhaps the only way to achieve that in this “say anything for clicks” economy is to say nothing at all.