Nicole Kidman’s creative spark with new co-star Murray Bartlett

He’s Australia’s newest A-lister and she’s topped the Hollywood box office for decades. Nicole Kidman has backed her new co-star as “beautiful, beautiful actor” she can’t wait to work with again. WATCH their interview.

Nicole Kidman at the LA premiere of Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 this week. Picture: Getty Images

He’s Australia’s newest A-lister and she’s topped the Hollywood box office for decades.

Nicole Kidman has backed Murray Bartlett as a “beautiful, beautiful actor” and says she’s already looking to work with her friend again after filming their first ever project together, the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers.

“We will (work together) again,” Kidman said, Bartlett adding: “It was a thrilling, wonderful experience”.

There is actually only three years in age difference between the pair, who were both born in Sydney and have gone on to become massive names in film and television globally.

Nicole Kidman at the LA premiere of Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 this week. Picture: Getty Images

While Kidman, 57, soared to an Academy Award win in 2003 for The Hours, Bartlett remained undeniably lesser known in a mainstream sense until scoring the standout role of Armond in the first season of The White Lotus.

That role won him a Critics’ Choice Award.

Nicole Kidman at the LA premiere of Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 this week. Picture: Getty Images

Murray Bartlett in Nine Perfect Strangers.

The pair will share the small screen with Kidman as controversial wellness guru Masha Dmitrichenko in what is almost guaranteed to be a huge hit.

Set in the Swiss Alps, Bartlett will play “cancelled” kids TV presenter Brian among a quirky group seeking Dmitrichenko’s “psychedelic” assistance at a luxe retreat.

“We would all sit around the monitor (during production) and be like oh (wow) because he would deliver,” Kidman said.

“It is very hard what he had to do.”

Nicole Kidman, Christine Baranski, Annie Murphy, King Princess, Murray Bartlett, Lena Olin, Dolly de Leon, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Lucas Englander, Mark Strong, Aras Aydin and Henry Golding at the LA premier. Picture: AFP

The Sunday Telegraph spoke with Kidman and Bartlett via Zoom exclusively from Los Angeles ahead of Nine Perfect Strangers season two red carpet event on Friday.

Based on the book of the same name by Australian Liane Moriarty, the series premieres on Prime Video on May 22.

Kidman is an executive producer with her Blossom Films behind the project, alongside Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories and David E. Kelley.

The show takes place on a transformational wellness retreat in the Austrian Alps.

Sat together comfortably like old friends, Kidman proudly prompted Bartlett to talk about the puppet his character would use in his previous life on television.

“He’s magnificent as a puppeteer,” she smiled.

A humble Bartlett said: “It is an extraordinary opportunity to have a character like this. It’s so well written with so many kind of dimensions and one of the sort of aspects being that he’s kind of externalised in a lot of ways a part of himself into this bear that he is part of his kids TV show that he hosts or hosted before he was cancelled.”

He continued: “When you see that on paper … this kids TV show host who has a bear, there’s psychedelics happening, you know it’s gonna get kind of fun and crazy.”

“And I knew that there was gonna be some challenging and wonderful things for me to do as an actor with this puppet, giving the voice to the puppet.

Nine new strangers connected in ways they could never imagine when they are invited by mysterious guru, Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman) to join a transformational wellness retreat.

“It is super creative and fun I think that’s one of the things that I love about this show and this season of this show is that the balance between the humour and the depths that it goes to is so beautifully written and it kind of jumps between the two in a great way.

“As an audience member, you don’t get to wallow in things because then you’re laughing the next minute, it almost disarms you in a way … it kind of jars you. I just love that kind of writing.”

Kidman got her start in Australian film BMX Bandits in 1983 while Bartlett’s first job was on TV show The Flying Doctors four years later.

He went on to appear on classic shows like A Country Practice, Home and Away, Neighbours, G.P., and McLeod’s Daughters before heading to the US and scoring a one off on Sex and the City.

“He’s magnificent as a puppeteer,” she Kidman of Murray Barlettt, whose character is the children’s television host.

The Looking in 2014 became an indie TV hit internationally as did Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, in which he starred alongside Laura Linney and the late Olympia Dukakis.

All the while, Bartlett popped up in smaller roles in big US TV and film productions including Damages, The Good Wife and Nashville.

“He has a really good balance of work/life and his heart is open. How do you maintain that Murray?” Kidman asked.

To that question, Murray responded: “I meditate a lot every day, I have a very strong practice. I’ve found things because I have had a lot of noise in my head … as we all do to a certain extent, but I found things to kind of anchor me.

“Also, it wasn’t super hard for me to relate to this character of Brian because I’ve always been a bit of a people pleaser and I’ve always aspired to be balanced.

“There have been times in my life when that hasn’t worked out or I haven’t received that back so I have a lot of pent-up rage. Which, you know, I process through meditating.

“One of the reasons it’s wonderful to be an actor, you get to do all these things that you wouldn’t necessarily do in life, right? And it kind of supercharges it.”

Kidman agreed.

Henry Golding in Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2.

“Yeah, it is like you get all of these other lives. I always say you have this very simple sort of normal life because creatively you get to go off and be completely wild and crazy.”

Bartlett is equally passionate when speaking about Kidman and her skill, describing the beloved Australian actor as “superhuman”.

“I wonder how you keep all these kind of pots on the boil and remain a sense of sanity and sort of groundedness, which you do or you appear to do?” he asked her.

She too meditates.

“I swim in the ocean, I have a huge connection to nature,” Kidman noted.

“I love being in nature and I genuinely love people.

“I love being a part of the world and I love to be alive. If I bring it back to that, I go ‘wow, I’m very lucky and the simplest formative of it is just to be alive’.”

Nine Perfect Strangers season two premieres on Prime Video on May 22.

Originally published as Nicole Kidman’s creative spark with new co-star Murray Bartlett