From Eliza Hittman’s evocative, moonlit Beach Rats to Ruben Östlund’s The Triangle of Sadness and Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw, Harris Dickinson has built up a thrilling résumé over the last seven years, leaping readily from indie dramas to black comedies ahd stylish whodunnits. (2022’s Where the Crawdads Sing, yes, but also Tom George’s See How They Run, also starring Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell, from the same year. Worth seeking out!)
Yet with Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, the 28-year-old Brit recieves perhaps his greatest showcase yet, starring as Samuel, a bullish intern with whom Nicole Kidman’s Romy, a high-powered CEO, has a torrid, sado-masochistic affair. It’s heady stuff, full of incisive commentary about female desire, modern masculinity, and the theater of both sex and girlbossery—as well as being a plain old good time at the movies.
Ahead of Babygirl’s relase this Christmas Day, Dickinson stopped by The Run-Through with Vogue to chat with Chloe Malle and me about his cat, George Michael’s “Father Figure,” red carpet-dressing, and the ragù he can’t wait to make this season. Read excerpts from our conversation below.
Chloe Malle: Marley and I were both excited to find out that Nicole attributed your first meeting with her to Anna Wintour?
Harris Dickinson: Yeah, it was at the Met Gala.
Malle: Set the scene. That’s a very chic meet-cute.
Dickinson: It was two years ago. I didn’t really know anyone there yet, and everyone arrives slowly, slowly, as you know, and then there’s different arrival times, whatever. And I bumped into Margaret Qualley, who I know a little bit, but I was talking to her and then I knew that I was doing the film with Nicole, and I saw Nicole sat with Keith [Urban] over across the way, and I thought, well I probably should say hello, because we’re about to do something together.
Malle: You’d never met, but you knew you were doing it together?
Dickinson: We’d never met, but I’d been cast. And I thought, well I could sort of pretend I haven’t seen her…but Margaret saw me looking and she was like, “Who are you looking at?” I said, “Nicole’s over there.” And she said, “Come on, I’ll take you over because I know her.” So she walked me over and introduced me and it was fine. She was so lovely.
Marley Marius: She also seemed to be quite endeared by your cat. She said that when you guys were first speaking on a Zoom call early in the process, she saw your cat, like, walk across the background, and she was like, Okay, this guy’s gonna be perfect for Samuel. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Dickinson: If this cat knew that Nicole Kidman knew its name, it would be even more arrogant than it is.
Marius: What’s the cat’s name?
Dickinson: Misty. I tried to call him Terry. Terrence, Terry for short. And my partner didn’t want to go with that, so Misty ended up being his name. But he’s very sweet. He’s a good lad. He’s cultured. Have you ever seen that thing of Willem Dafoe talking, and he’s like, [breaks into Willem Dafoe impression] “He loves classical music…” and it’s like me talking about my cat. “Misty loves Wagner. He’s into the arts.”
Marius: Your Dafoe’s not bad, I have to say.
Dickinson: But [Nicole’s] an animal person, as well. So I think that was maybe what she meant.
Malle: I did think that it’s one of the more dramatic first reveals of a character I’ve seen in a while, you taming the dog. Are you a dog healer?
Dickinson: Yeah, that dog was tricky. An amazing dog, but often these dogs in film and TV, they’re trained to safely attack, and he had so much energy, it was really hard getting the dog to like, just be calm. There were times where I was just feeding it sausage after sausage to try and calm it down. But it was a lovely dog. And then there was a scene in the street where the dog jumps onto Nicole, and I just looked over, and Nicole was lying in the middle of the street, in the middle of Manhattan, and everyone was walking past, like, what is going on?
Malle: I want to know what Halina told you about her vision for Samuel. When you first got the call describing who this character was, because it came out of her mind, what was the most important thing for her?
Dickinson: I think she spoke quite a lot about his struggle with his own identity and masculinity; the idea that there was this young guy coming up against a version of himself that he was still grappling to understand, which is, you know, important in today’s climate, where young people are so easily strayed, influenced, and potentially controlled by the internet and pop culture and film. There’s different narratives and confusing ideals that we come up against. So I think that was something that was very important for him.
And also, his directness was always in the script: his honesty with Romy, Nicole’s character. She’s a high-powered CEO, so she’s holding [everything] together with great control, and everyone around her is revering her, respecting her. And Samuel comes in, and he just pokes through it and sees what happens. He watches her, studies her, and then he dares to challenge her. And once he challenges her, he understands that it’s ultimately what interests her—it turns her on, it kind of makes her tick. And so, that was a big part of it.
Marius: And yet there’s a politeness to him. It’s a very interesting sort of line that you’re walking between being respectful, acknowledging that what he’s doing is not quite okay, but then going for it anyway.
Dickinson: It was obvious that we couldn’t just have this guy that was uber cool and uber dominating—it’s kind of been done and it’s a little uninteresting. So a big thing Halina spoke about, which is clear when you watch the film, and I think it’s some of the best parts of it, is you see the awkwardness of what sex and relationships and even just normal interaction can be, with two people fumbling their way through, like, roles.
I really was interested in that, and I think that when you watch it you see those moments of embarrassment that are kind of real, because it is a little embarrassing to do those things in it. But we were able to lean into it and laugh.
Marius: And the “Father Figure” dance scene—was that on the page?
Dickinson: Yeah.
Marius: And was that choreographed?
Dickinson: No. You thought it looked choreographed?
Marius: I mean, not no.
Dickinson: I got sent the song a long time before, and it kind of said in the script, you know, “He moves through the space,” and then Romy was sat down, and I thought, God, well, this can’t be like a lap dance. So I thought this has kind of got to be for himself, but also for her. And I may have had a few drinks for that.
Marius: It’s very vibey.
Dickinson: It was more embarrassing because of the crew. Like, you spent so long with these people that you see every day, and it’s like, “Hey, how you doing? How’s your weekend? What are you having for dinner?” You know, like, very normal, banal chat. And then all of a sudden you’ve got your top off, and you’re, like, jiving around. You catch eye contact with them, and you’re like, “Sorry about that.”
Malle: I feel like people are talking about this movie as sort of bringing back sexy scenes in a way that we haven’t seen for a while. I thought it was interesting that Nicole said she feels like a sex therapist because people just keep spilling their souls to her in response to seeing the movie. Is your family seeing this over Christmas?
Dickinson: My family saw it. My mom’s very open-minded. My mom saw it in London; she loved it. She said she wore a turtleneck in case she needed to cover her eyes. She loved it, though. Same with my sister. But people’s responses have been interesting. I think it’s been a real range of thought-provoking to filthy, to be honest with you. Like, people are unafraid to say exactly what they think, particularly when they’ve just seen it. We’ve been doing these screenings and, like, 80-year-old women have been saying some very funny stuff to me.
Malle: Give us an example.
Dickinson: [One woman] came out and grabbed me and straight away she said, “Well, I can’t wait to get home and use that vibrator.”
Marius: You’re liberating women!
Dickinson: I said, “Alright, well, go ahead and do that, that’s good.” And then another one said to me, “Well, honey, I’ve got no one to sleep with tonight,” and she tickled me. And I thought, Well, there’s a room full of people, go and mingle. The night is young. So, it’s interesting. It’s definitely igniting liberation in people, which is good, at the end of the day.
Malle: You have worked with so many fantastic directors. Is the process of getting to trust them always different?
Dickinson: I always have a process of figuring that out. With directors, you have to do it quick, otherwise your performance suffers, I think—if you’re scared of stuff, if you’re worrying about how you’re gonna be looked after. All of the people I’ve been lucky enough to work with—you know, Sean Durkin, Eliza Hittman, Ruben Östlund, Joanna Hogg—I’ve just been really fortunate. But it always takes me a minute—I don’t just give it straight away.
Malle: On day one of a movie like this, was there any sort of trust exercise to begin with? Or some sort of way that you got to know each other?
Marius: And Halina being an actor, did that change the dynamic?
Dickinson: Yeah, I’ll answer the exercise thing first. We didn’t do a lot of that. We had a one-day rehearsal, and it was just a very brief period where Nicole, Halina, and I sat down and spoke and looked through all the scenes. We were lucky in the sense that me and Nicole bonded really quickly. We felt very comfortable with each other very, very soon. So that was a tick off the list. And then we just got into it and we just did it.
But, Halina, yeah, as an actor, I think it changes what you expect from yourself. Because even with the crew, she’s showing us what she imagines it to be, and she’s throwing herself around the floor, like, [with] no shame. Same with Nicole. Nicole has got this mad playfulness as a performer. She’s so bold with stuff. She’s not scared to try stuff. And then you think, oh, I can try stuff as well.
Malle: What’s an example of something that she tried that made you feel like you could be free to do something kooky or goofy?
Dickinson: The rave, for example. A lot of that was scripted, but she just threw herself into it. She was, like, grabbing people and kissing them and stuff.
Marius: Your breakout was seven years ago now, with Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats. I know you self-taped for that role; what was your life like at that moment? And what was sort of on your mind as you were preparing to put yourself out there in that way?
Dickinson: I just wanted to work. I just wanted to do anything. I was working in a hotel, I’d done some theater, and I’d done some smaller, unpaid stuff, and the irony of that situation is I spent six, seven weeks in L.A. doing pilot season, and I saved up from my hotel job, and I didn’t get a thing, which is very normal. Seven weeks went by, I went back to the hotel, and I saved up for another seven, eight months, and I went back and did it again. And again, I didn’t get anything, so I went home and begged for my job back at the hotel. And then I got a self-tape through, and did it in my childhood bedroom, and it ended up being the thing that ultimately launched my career. But yeah, I just really wanted to work. I just wanted to do stuff and learn. I hadn’t been to drama school, so for me, being on set was like my education in some way, as well.
Malle: Have you ever been an intern?
Dickinson: I’ve been a runner. I used to be a runner on music videos, and I was a runner at Notting Hill Carnival for a rapper. That was crazy, running around with this rapper and a really small crew.
Malle: When was that?
Dickinson: That was maybe 10 years ago. I was 16, 17. I was also here, in this building, doing something for The Iron Claw with Zac [Efron] and Jeremy [Allen White], and at the time I was preparing for Baby Girl, and I’d never worked in an office. I didn’t know that environment very well, so I got lost and just puttered around for a bit and was bothering people, asking questions.
Marius: To, like, find out what it was like to push papers?
Malle: That’d be a great TikTok.
Dickinson: It’s such an actor thing to do. But yeah, I’d only done retail, hospitality, other stuff. I was not an office boy.
Malle: We have a dear British colleague who writes about music a lot for us, and he reminded us before this interview that he recently wrote a wonderful piece about your partner, and that you had directed one of her videos. I wonder, do you have rules with each other? In terms of, we’re both public-facing, but we’re not talking about this. We are working together, but we are going to keep certain parts of our work lives separate.
Dickinson: I think it’s nice because we’re in different industries. There’s rarely overlap. I mean, the music video stuff is something we’ve been doing for a while, but it’s nice that our worlds are different. I always get very starstruck by musicians. I’m always so fascinated by what they do, and I’m so impressed by what my partner does. It’s a hard world. But I think there’s certain things you have to keep sacred. You have to keep stuff between us, just to keep it special, you know.
Marius: What kind of music do you listen to?
Dickinson: It’s cliché: everything. I don’t know.
Malle: What was on your Spotify Wrapped?
Dickinson: Embarrassingly, “Father Figure” was on there, because I listened to it a lot.
Marius: It’s a great song.
Dickinson: But also “Missing (Todd Terry Remix)” by Everything but the Girl. “Crush” by Jennifer Paige. Sega Bodega, James Blake, Gunna, Ludovico Einaudi.
Malle: Since we’re a fashion podcast, I want to know, is it a chore to dress for a press tour, or is there sort of fun in it? We’ve been talking a lot at Vogue about how everyone is method-dressing these days.
Dickinson: Are you guys into the theme-dressing?
Malle: Really depends. It can go very wrong very fast.
Dickinson: Well, luckily, me and my stylist, Ben Schofield, the lovely Ben, we’ve not done that so much because Samuel, he’s wearing sort of regular, normal baggy suits.
Malle: We love his chain.
Dickinson: His chain’s nice. And did you notice his little clipper thing? His little carabiner with his keys? But dressing for press tours is not a chore. When you’ve got help, it’s really fun. I can’t imagine having to do it on my own. I’d be a mess.
Malle: What are you wearing today?
Dickinson: Today…this wasn’t actually a look. I changed because I was a bit uncomfortable. I’m wearing Prada shoes, nice trousers, and then an Adidas top, because I just wanted to feel more like myself, and sometimes when I dress very smart, I don’t feel like myself. And we’re flying after this.
Marius: Where are you off to?
Dickinson: Going back to London.
Malle: We’re gonna let you go, but I just want to know what the Christmas plan is.
Dickinson: I’m gonna get back in touch with cooking. I lost that a little bit this year because I was busy, so I really just want to make some nice food.
Malle: What’s the holiday recipe?
Dickinson: Well, there’s a lovely ragù that I wanted to try again—a short rib ragù that I did recently. I say recently; last year is the last time I did it. And it was just, like, chef’s kiss. And then luckily, I don’t have to do the cooking at my family’s. I’ve got a big family that will do it for me, so I can just rock up with the booze.
Malle: Thank you so much. What a delight. I hope that your ragù is everything and more.