Photography-Illustration: Amazon, BBC, Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery

Nicole Kidman is one of the biggest movie stars we’ve ever had. Ethereal, gorgeous and slightly odd, the Australian-born actor has directed more than 80 films since the early 1990s. He remained a fixture in the public imagination thanks to his gossip page-fuelled early career; A. high profile collaboration at the height of her stardom with her soon-to-be ex-husband Tom Cruise; and many cinematic reinventions since. It has become meme legend status for him an AMC Theaters commercialIt’s fitting that he extols the virtues of cinema for an audience already in theatres; It’s always been Nicole Kidman’s brightest summer.

Interestingly, Kidman has also turned into a television star in recent years. Since 2017, he has appeared as part of the ensemble in David E. Kelley’s film. Big Little Lieshas become one of the most visible A-listers on the small screen. It has a new show almost every year and can be found on at least one original series on most major streaming services. And thank goodness: When an actor of Kidman’s caliber is so devoted to translating the otherworldly grandeur of her iconography into the unique pleasures of television, something sparkling happens. Over the years, it’s become clear that television’s Nicole Kidman has a distinctive flavor: Her characters tend to be rich, elegant, and stressed-out snobs in the upper echelons of society; However, he sometimes turns to portraying characters with more modest living conditions. , to mixed results. But overall, Kidman’s move into television has been marked by projects that use her Galadriel-like energy to explore dark truths.

Below, we rank the actress’s modern television roles based on how the show represents the Nicole Kidman TV Experience and the overall quality of the series. For our purposes, we are working on a specific definition. modern: Kidman appeared on Australian television in the ’80s before making her breakthrough as a movie star in the 1990s. Days of Thunder. He would soon return to television with cameo roles. Sesame Street And Hello Ladies: The Moviebut we don’t count that. He also appeared in the 2012 TV movie. Hemingway and GellhornBut it’s a movie, so it doesn’t count. No it was 2017 Big Little Lies HE It marked the beginning of the real Nicole Kidman TV Experience we love.

2022, Apple TV+

Photo: Apple TV+

In this entry in Apple TV+’s anthology series of feminist stories, Kidman is a woman named Robin who spends a long time on an overnight road trip with her mother, played by Judy Davis. Robin is in a tough spot in life. Her already struggling mother is struggling with dementia, so she embarks on a journey to place her in Robin’s home. While he is struggling with the possibility of slowly losing his mother, he is also dealing with the fact that his eldest son will soon be going to college, which makes him feel even more adrift. So he naturally copes by eating photographs, which allows him to briefly experience the scene contained in the picture.

Yes, it’s a strange conceit to follow the episode’s memoir themes, but “The Woman Who Ate the Photographs” is a short story that doesn’t really need to explain itself. As a character, Robin represents the greatest departure from the moneyed archetypes that typically define Kidman’s television roles: Robin lives in a modest house in the suburbs, where she’s married to the kindly, swashbuckling Simon Baker, but Kidman rocks the wig in an oddly ’80s-inspired way It gets the perfect short hair style. Robin is TV’s least interesting Kidman, but “The Woman Who Ate Photos” repeatedly gives us the indelible image of Kidman destroying old Polaroids like Cheetos.

2013, Sundance TV

Photo: SundanceTV/Seesaw Movies

Jane Campion’s sequel series Top of the Lake widely and rightly, was considered inferior to its predecessormainly for its sin of making explicit what was poetically implicit in the first season, and never fully acknowledging how strange, contrived, and confusing it was. Consider Kidman’s character Julia Edwards, whose character begins in the middle of a divorce from her husband Pyke, with whom she has an adopted daughter named Mary who was abandoned 17 years ago by Sydney detective Robin Griffin. By Elisabeth Moss, who serves as the main protagonist of the series. It turns out that Mary is also romantically involved with the skinny German Cat, whose brothel is the site of the big crime Robin is investigating… it’s all a thing. Everything is connected, my friend!

Kidman is largely secondary to the action. Chinese GirlHowever, as is her habit, she continues to push the boundaries of the makeup department. As Julia, Kidman is endowed with gray curly hair that does not suit her at all. Hocus PocusIt frames a face full of freckles, a nose replaced by a prosthetic protrusion, and fake teeth anchored by a visible gap. It’s quite a transformation, and one of the few truly memorable features from this unforgettable season of television.

2024, Amazon Prime Video

Photo: Prime Video

Created by FarewellLulu Wang, expats A bleak drama about two women, Kidman’s financial wife Margaret and Ji-young Yoo’s younger, headstrong Korean American Mercy, are bound together by tragedy when the latter’s neglect results in the disappearance of the former’s child. There’s also a third expatriate in the mix named Hilary (Sarayu Blue), an estranged friend of Margaret’s, but her problems are more existential and sort of incidental to that central despair. expats It’s a bit of a mess, a jumbled drag that mimics Wong Kar-Wai melancholy while delivering sloppy class critique, but the Prime Video series has two things going for it. First, the spectacular Hong Kong setting has spectacular views, although this may have complicated the enjoyment. Political sensitivities surrounding the city in the years Since the production hit. Secondly, Kidman gives a compelling performance as a woman who is completely devastated after losing her child. The richness of his character adds a touch of the absurd to this: In Hong Kong, famous for its expensiveness, he rents a pied-à-terre specifically for mourning purposes. For Kidman, even sadness is glamorous.

2021 on Hulu

Photo: Vince Valitutti/Hulu

kidman For this went Methodthis makes sense. It was shot during the pandemic and you more For a long time he wanted to be a completely different person. Nine Perfect Strangers It sees the Australian adopt an almost intelligible Eastern European accent as she portrays Masha, the guru of Tranquillum House, a boutique wellness resort that promises a transformative healing experience through non-traditional means. (Drugs and what could legibly be described as psychological torture are factors in the hearings.) This Hulu series is the weakest of the three Kelley series featuring Kidman; it has a meandering narrative, doesn’t actually lead to anything satisfying, and in its time, it certainly suffered from paling compared to similar resort-themed White LotusHe debuted right after. But something needs to be said about what Masha allowed Kidman to do; which channels the player’s natural spiritual energy into a cult leader-like figure who vacillates vaguely between comforting, mysterious, and downright disturbing.

2023-current, Paramount+

Photo: Greg Lewis/Paramount+

Speaking of a character that will get you down, here’s Kaitlyn Meade. Kidman’s TV career usually involves the upper crust of wealth, but with Meade she wields a different kind of power: that of the American security state. in the world Special Operations: LionessMeade is part of the American superstructure: a high-level CIA official who is married to a billionaire (so don’t worry, she’s still rich) and is particularly adept at manipulating senators – all while managing a hard-boiled agent, Joe. Played by Zoe Saldaña. Kidman might initially seem like a bad fit for the ever-expanding Taylor Sheridan Universe, and sure, there’s a slight dissonance when watching her mouth-thumping Sheridan’s dick-waving dialogue. (“When we want to hear you talk, we’ll tell you to talk.”) Still, there’s a clear connection between the emblems of the American elite he plays and the role he plays. Lionessand it’s a lot of fun to see Kidman as a shadowy CIA director who’s all power suits and hilarious quips.

2024 on Netflix

Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

Perfect Couple It’s not perfect. In fact, it’s a bit too generic, like the “whole murder mystery about rich people” conceit has been driven and flattened by the Netflix gourmet-cheeseburger machine. But hey, the cheeseburger still tastes good. Developed by Jenna Lamia and directed by Susanne Bier, this limited series has all the ingredients for a mindless good time: There’s a Nantucket wedding, there’s a murder, and there’s a suspicious, super-rich family and their entourage. possible suspects. Kidman is quite good as Greer Garrison Winbury, the hugely successful British writer at the center of it all. Her wig looks like a gorgeous wave of ocean blonde, and her mood in this series is that of a strong matriarch with a temperament of ice and steel who spends a lot of time trying to contain the public effects of a murder. He threatens to destroy his family and reputation. It’s a character that makes particularly good use of Kidman’s eyes: piercing, observant, unnoticeable.

2017-2019, HBO

Photo: HBO

The first of Kidman’s collaborations with Kelley took the beach-read madness of Liane Moriarty, made its prestige mark on HBO, and became an undeniable sensation by thoroughly mixing the highbrow with the mundane. More importantly, it marks Kidman’s first return to television after achieving movie stardom in 1990. Big Little Lies Set template for Nicole Kidman TV Experience. Kidman’s Celeste Wright (a former lawyer now living under the stifling oppression of her abusive husband Perry, played by a reliably terrifying Alexander Skarsgård) establishes many of the key tropes that will define how we tend to think about Kidman’s TV roles: a The woman trapped in the prison of sterling wealth. Based on this contribution alone, the argument could reasonably be made that this series should be at the top of this list. But counterpoint: Big Little Lies Kidman shares the table with Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, and (to a lesser extent) Laura Dern and Zoë Kravitz; each has its own issues, which doesn’t warrant top billing. Also, the second season wasn’t very good. This brings us to:

2020, HBO’s

Photo: David Giesbrecht

The platonic ideal of the Nicole Kidman TV Experience. Retrieval reunited Kidman Paddington Starring Hugh Grant plays Grace Fraser, a dazzling psychologist and the wife of Grant’s successful oncologist, who is constantly devastated when she is named the prime suspect in the murder of a mysterious woman. She’s everything you’d expect from Television Kidman: She’s an upper-class socialite, owns a beach house, and rocks an extensive wardrobe of impossibly opulent coats as the world she once knew completely melts away around her. Retrieval We also see Kidman working with a mix of material that suits her current tastes: It’s a Kelley collaboration directed by Susanne Bier and adapted from the work of Jean Hanff Korelitz, also another exciting page-turner. you should have known. Grant, who made his debut on American television, is excellent as both a mean and slimy husband to the slim Kidman; They team up to form the kind of Upper East Side, charity ball couple you love to hate on TV. Retrieval It became a huge hit for HBO, due in part to divine timing, serving as a first-rate fever dream escape during the deep winter of the pandemic. But its success almost certainly had something to do with how it presented the pure, uncut Kidman.