Nicole Kidman appears in the video for Troye Sivan's She's the Best, released on Friday, playing the person the song is about. It is a short piece of work and a very deliberate piece of casting.
What happens in it
Sivan opens the thing looking out of a cafe window at Kidman, dressed head to toe in black and smoking, before she slips backstage into a drag bar. When she finally arrives on the dance floor, he is centre stage and singing at her.
The refrain is uncomplicated admiration, and he delivers it holding eye contact with her from across the room. She takes a drink and gives him a small knowing smile back.
Only her third music video
This is the third one she has ever appeared in. The previous occasion was 2001, for Somethin' Stupid, the duet she recorded with Robbie Williams. Her first came in 1983, for Bop Girl by Pat Wilson.
How the two of them know each other
They met in 2018 on the set of Boy Erased, the drama about a boy whose Baptist parents send him into conversion therapy. Sivan told Rolling Stone he wanted her for this video because she has always struck him as a picture of the divine feminine.
The best part of his account is the logistics of asking. He sent her the song and some visual references, and she rang him back from a number he did not recognise while he was sitting in a Zoom meeting. He let it go to voicemail, watched the live transcription open with a greeting from Nic, shut his laptop and ended the meeting on the spot.
The video is not far from her actual evenings
The clubbing version of Kidman on screen turns out to be close to the real one. She went viral recently for laying out the routine to British Vogue: dinner at half past ten, club at one, glasses on, and sometimes a small dark wig so that she can dance without being recognised. The one requirement is company, which she brings with her.