Nicole Kidman feels ‘so lucky’ to be married to Keith Urban
Nicole Kidman opens up about their relationship, almost 20 years after they first met. She has stated that she is “so lucky” to have married Keith Urban.
Bang Showbiz
Spoiler alert! We discuss major ending details for the romantic comedy ‘A Family Affair’ (now streaming on Netflix).
Somewhere among the horned melons and avocados, Nicole Kidman found love in a supermarket.
That’s the crux of her new romantic comedy “A Family Affair,” in which she plays the lead role of a widowed memoirist named Brooke who falls in love with an unexpectedly soulful movie star, Chris Cole (Zac Efron), who is 20 years her junior. The problem is that Brooke’s daughter, Zara (Joey King), has been working as Chris’s beleaguered assistant and is rebelling against her mother dating him. Ultimately, Brooke agrees and breaks up with the handsome A-lister over Christmas.
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Zara feels guilty and is finally ready to accept her mother’s happiness. She organizes a surprise reunion for Brooke and Chris at a supermarket, where they promise to give their relationship another chance. As they kiss, a gentle rain falls on the vegetables, leaving the couple surrounded by mist – a clever practical illusion orchestrated by Zara, an aspiring Hollywood producer.
“We created a little rainstorm over the products,” explains screenwriter Carrie Solomon. At the film’s premiere in Los Angeles, “he even received applause. It was a kind of joke about movie magic, which became funny and beautiful at the same time. That’s exactly the balance we were trying to achieve with the whole film.”
Netflix movie ‘A Family Affair’ originally had an alternate ending
“A Family Affair” initially had a different finale. Early in the film, Chris takes Brooke on their first date to a Hollywood backyard, where they dress up in top hats and pose with retro feather fans (which director Richard Lagravenese describes as a nod to Kidman’s 2001 film “Moulin Rouge!”) . The film ended with a reunion at the same sound studio for a while.
“But after shooting and watching the movie, we realized the ending didn’t satisfy us emotionally,” Lagravenese says. “It was too tropey and not tropey enough. It also didn’t integrate Zara enough and didn’t give us the right cap for her journey.”
Solomon always knew she wanted the film to end in an unlikely place. “It was funny, when we put our heads together to think about what turned Chris Cole on, it was the ordinary,” she says. Because he is so famous and cannot appear in public often, “there was something about a supermarket that made it strangely desirable for both of them to find normalcy at the same time and in the same place.”
Viewers quickly notice that it’s no ordinary supermarket: Zara sits behind the cash register, running the light and rain machine, and she fills the store with a bunch of paid perks that won’t swamp Chris as soon as he walks in. essentially a movie set,” says Solomon. “That’s just a nod (to the audience) that nothing about this is ordinary.” At the same time, “we tried to place it in the real world as much as possible. It’s just two people who eventually fell in love.”
Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron took shopping breaks between takes
“A Family Affair” reunites Kidman, 57, and Efron, 36, following their steamy 2012 thriller “The Paperboy.” On the first day of shooting for that film, “they just fell into each other’s arms and met as friends,” Lagravenese recalled. “There was a comfort and ease and respect for each other that just carried over into (their characters).”
They especially enjoyed filming in the grocery store. The ending was filmed at Trancas Country Market in Malibu, California, where the cast and crew were given a tab to get whatever they wanted.
“It’s like having your own pantry the size of a grocery store,” Solomon says, laughing. “I remember Nicole saying at the end of the day, ‘I could totally go for a kale chip.’ I was like, ‘Aisle 3!’ We were all just running around shopping between shots. It was a crazy thing — talk about wish fulfillment.”
