Nicole Kidman has revealed the intense behind-the-scenes ritual she shares with Morgan Freeman before cameras roll on the Paramount+ spy thriller Lioness.
Kidman, 59, and Freeman, 89, are both currently appearing in the third season of the Taylor Sheridan-created CIA series, which returned on August 2. The Oscar-winning actress plays CIA Clandestine Service supervisor Kaitlyn Meade, while the legendary actor portrays US Secretary of State Edwin Mullins. Their preparation process, she explained, extends well beyond typical rehearsal.
“We have to understand every single thing we’re saying,” Kidman said at Paramount+’s The Icons of Taylor Sheridan’s Universe event in April, calling the Lioness scripts “dense.”
“And that is a huge [undertaking]. It has to come trippingly off your tongue. You have to understand everything, and it has to [seem like] something that you are using as everyday language all the time, which obviously we’re not.”
The Australian actress continued that the work never stops for her and her co-stars. “Michael Kelly, and I, and Morgan Freeman, we are just completely always working,” she shared.
That collaboration manifests in a specific pre-scene routine. In order to dissect the scripts and better understand their lines, Kidman said she and Freeman talk through them before hitting the set.
“We also do, ‘What does that mean? Decipher it.’ Definition, definition, definition. So that we constantly understand what we’re talking about,” she added about the backstage ritual.
Kidman has previously compared working on the series to “doing a thesis in the CIA,” She said at the streamer’s April event that she has a team of people “that do my research on every single term that I’m using so that I know everything I’m talking about,” on top of the fact-checking that Sheridan, 56, does himself.
“Taylor is so [relevant]— particularly with Lioness, and particularly season 3,” she added. “It’s like, wow, it’s so topical, and you’re constantly treading in these minefields, and you’ve got to keep up, like, really keep up, because it’s really hard to follow.”
Freeman, for his part, has been equally effusive about the show’s creator. He said that Sheridan’s writing “has to do more with the human experience, what people are actually going through, emotionally, in a lot of cases.”
“You saw that a lot in Yellowstone, and you actually see it a lot in any of his writings. And here, in Lioness, in Joe’s case, for instance, he is dealing with a woman whose life is on the line very often. She has kids and a husband. She makes decisions and she has to consider these. It takes courage to write about stuff like that, and Taylor seems to have an awful lot of it.”
Kidman’s partnership with Freeman is not her only on-set bond. She and Zoe Saldaña, 48, who plays lead operative Joe McNamara, share their own morning ritual of personal catch-ups before diving into work. “After catching up personally every morning for like five or 10 minutes, then immediately we get into hair and makeup and we are discussing the scenes,” Saldaña said.
The two actresses also “tag-team” tracking down Sheridan whenever scenes need clarification. “We tag-team finding out where Taylor is and seeing if he’s going to call us back because, when we need him, it’s always having to do with the work,” Saldaña explained.
In the viral moment that launched the current season, Lioness returned August 2 with “The Bear Is Infected” airing August 16 as its third episode. The season sees “hidden networks, foreign operatives, and personal betrayals colliding,” per an official synopsis, with Joe “walking the line between duty and home as unseen forces circle her world. Patterns appear where they shouldn’t, names vanish, and paths rearrange.”
Fans have responded enthusiastically, with one viewer taking to X to declare, “I haven’t said enough how good Nicole Kidman is in this show too. So let me say that now.” Another posted, “#lioness is easily the best show on TV right now.”
Beyond Lioness, Kidman is gearing up for the release of Practical Magic 2, which hits theatres on September 11.