Nicole Kidman comes home for The Expats

In a ‘neat, romantic’ ending for Sydney’s Palace Verona cinema — opened in 1996 by Nicole Kidman — the star will return to premiere her new television show.

Nicole Kidman opening the Palace Verona in 1996. Picture: Palace Cinemas

Nicole Kidman will visit the Palace Verona cinema in Paddington one last time before it goes dark.

Kidman opened the cinema on Valentine’s Day in 1996, for the Australian premiere of Gus Van Sant’s tar-black comedy To Die For, in which she played a psychotically ambitious turned murderous weather girl, opposite a young, mullet-sporting Joaquin Phoenix.

Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix in To Die For.

As Palace Cinemas CEO Benjamin Zeccola remembers it, that Valentine’s night felt like “Oxford Street was the centre of the world. It was just sublime.”
Zeccola recalls that his colleagues were “chuffed that Tom Cruise was cruising around waiting to pick her up and was getting impatient.”

“Meanwhile, Nicole was moving through the crowd, talking to people.”

Kidman returned to the Palace Verona on Wednesday night to host a special screening of the final 96-minute long episode of her new Prime Video series, The Expats, which she stars in and is executive producer of through her production company Blossom Films.

Zeccola says that, upon hearing that the Palace Verona would be shutting its doors in February next year, the creators of the show reached out to see if they could host their event at the cinema. “That the Verona is going to close next year, and that it was opened by Nicole is just a fitting way to end things.

Brian Tee and Kidman in Expats.

“There’s something so neat and romantic about it, we’ve come full circle so to speak.”

The Expats, which is based on Janice Y. K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates, is Kidman doing what she does best: playing a tortured woman, suffocated by a past trauma, trying to save face in glorious gowns at impeccable city parties.

The series, which is set against the backdrop of is centred on three women from other parts of the world, who are all living in Hong Kong, and are connected by tragedy against a backdrop of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution protests. Kidman, Margaret, an American expatriate whose young son has gone missing.

Kidman and Lulu Wang.

The series is directed by Lulu Wang, who Kidman reached out to while promoting her 2019 family drama The Farewell.

Production of The Expats became a lightning rod for controversy in 2021 after Kidman was given permission to skip Hong Kong’s stringent quarantine rules after arriving in the city from Sydney.

The Expats will premiere on Prime Video on January 26.