Nicole Kidman will speak about her ex-husband, Tom Cruise, on her own terms. That is the tough lesson that a journalist was forced to learn recently.
The Oscar winner is currently on a worldwide tour to promote her latest movie entitled Being the Ricardos.
The film focuses on the passionate and tumultuous romance between Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz, of I Love Lucy fame.
While pushing the Amazon Studio project, Nicole Kidman sat down with a reporter from The Guardian who made the error of bringing up her marriage to Tom Cruise that ended two decades ago.
Nicole Kidman eloquently spoke about the love and creativity between the power couple even though their marriage crumbled.
She explained: “It’s about a creative and romantic relationship that doesn’t work out. But from it come some extraordinary things. And I love that. I love that it’s not a happy ending. This film says you can make an extraordinary relationship thrive and leave remnants of it that exist forever.”
The actress and producer went on to say: “Yeah, that’s really gorgeous. You can’t make people behave how you want them to, and sometimes you’re going to fall in love with someone who isn’t going to be the person you spend the rest of your life with. And I think that’s all very relatable. You may have kids with them. You may not, but they were very much in love.”
According to the media outlet, interviewer Eva Wiseman “gently” asked Kidman if it was a “way of talking about Tom Cruise.”
Visibly offended, Kidman had a brutal response to the question that she deemed sexist and inappropriate.
She said that there was no parallel between her failed marriage to Tom Cruise and the Ricardos’ love story.
Nicole Kidman shut down the reporter by saying: “Oh, my God, no, no. Absolutely not. No. I mean, that’s, honestly, so long ago that that isn’t in this equation. So no. And I would ask not to be pigeonholed that way, either.”
The American-born Australian celebrity went on to explain why she believes that the reporter would not pose the question to a man.
She said: “It feels to me almost sexist because I’m not sure anyone would say that to a man. And at some point, you go, ‘Give me my life. In its own right.'”
The reporter was alluding to the fact that, like Ball and Arnaz, Kidman and Cruise were costars.
The former couple starred together in Days of Thunder, Far and Away, and Eyes Wide Shut.
The pair were married in 1990 and divorced in 2001 — they share two children.
