Nicole Kidman learned how to 'stick her fingers' in dead bodies for new role in Prime series
Topics: Nicole Kidman, Amazon Prime
William Morgan
Featured Image Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Topics: Nicole Kidman, Amazon Prime
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Acting powerhouse Nicole Kidman has shared a bizarre memory from her childhood that explains how she knew exactly how to 'stick her fingers' inside a corpse on the set of her new drama, Scarpetta.
The new Prime Video show, based on the criminal forensics thriller series by the prolific Patricia Cornwell, features Kidman as the titular character, Kay Scarpetta, a retired Chief Medical Examiner who returns to the force when a familiar serial killer re-emerges.
The star-studded crime drama, also featuring Jamie Lee Curtis and Bobby Cannavale, has some truly grisly moments, with the actor's character interacting with dead bodies and dismembered limbs throughout.
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But for Kidman, digging around inside a corpse is not some vomit-inducing act of grossness, she has revealed as the series drops on Prime Video. That is because she saw her first autopsy as a child, when her parents encouraged her to watch one.
The Australian-American actor shared with USA Today how her academically-minded parents, Anthony and Janelle Kidman, a clinical psychologist and a nursing instructor, would 'sit me down' in front of instructional medical movies.
Young Nicole and her sister Antonia would watch a number of films made for medical students, which often included grisly or gory moments of surgery. While this would make some people scream, the Academy Award winning actor learned something that would benefit her half a century later.
She told the publication: “That's how I learned so much about life is they would go, ‘Watch this medical film.’ We'd be like − my sister (younger sister Antonia Kidman) and I'd be like, ‘You’re kidding!’
"So I don't have a fear of blood or anything. So when I learned to do the autopsies, say, I was just like, ‘OK, teach me.’”
Separately, series creator Elizabeth Sarnoff has shared how Kidman got stuck in, literally, when a real life forensic medical examiner came to show her how to carry out an autopsy.
The mom-of-four was shown 'how you hold the scalpel and how you stick your fingers in there,' Sarnoff said ahead of her show's release, March 11, with Scarpetta's 100 million fans eager to see the new adaptation of the 29-book series.
"So I really just thought about what's the best story we can tell?," she told the publication. "What is the best story to illuminate the inner lives of these characters and how can we do it so that it's both a mystery that's exciting, but also an emotional drama that you find yourself getting sucked into?"
67-year-old Curtis also spoke to the publication about her and Kidman's characters' backgrounds, with both experiencing the death of their father at a young age.
She said: “What that does and how that shapes people and what path that sends them down is very evident here. Obviously Dorothy is acting out from that death and that experience.”
But Kidman chimed in: “And Scarpetta wants control over death. And that’s something that I discovered from the medical examiner, also obviously from the novels, (about) why do you choose to become a medical examiner.
"That is a particular choice. And the motivation of that, deep inside, which seems to be similar (for) a lot of medical examiners is the idea of accuracy and control over death, knowing why or how.
Reflecting on her own grief, she continued: “I almost relate to that. I lost my father [in 2014] and my main thing was finding out why. I lost him very suddenly to a heart attack, but I wanted to know why, and it became an obsession.
"So I get why Kay chooses to do the job because it gives her a sense of control over something that is completely uncontrollable.”