@rockmarooned Published March 15, 2026, 9:15 a.m. ET Photos: Everette Collection, Getty Images, Prime, Netflix, AMC ; Illustration: Dillen Phelps Where to Stream: Scarpetta Powered by Reelgood More On: Nicole Kidman Will There Be A Season 2 of ‘Scarpetta’? ‘Scarpetta’ Ending Explained: Who Is The Mystery Person Standing At the Door? Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Scarpetta’ On Prime Video, Where Nicole Kidman Is A Medical Examiner Who Is Haunted By Serial Killings She Thought She Solved Two Decades Ago Did Jessie Buckley ‘Norbit’ Her Oscar Chances, Eddie Murphy-Style? This might sound strange, but people still clap for Nicole Kidman at the movies. Not necessarily at her movies, because there haven’t been so many of those in recent years. But she’s still the face of AMC Theaters; nearly five years after the debut of her iconic pre-show spot sincerely worshiping at the altar of cinema (“we come to this place… for magic”), various recuts of that footage are still among the last things audiences see before their feature presentations (finally) begin, and at least in Manhattan, certain crowds of certain dispositions continue to dutifully applaud when she appears. (At the city’s one true IMAX on the Upper West Side, the reaction still feels like 2021, or at least early 2022.) I can only picture the rapture that must have greeted Kidman’s appearance in front of screenings of Babygirl, the A24 hit where she played a powerful executive finding unexpected sexual satisfaction from a dominant intern. To see Kidman welcome us to see Kidman! Just imagine!
For the most part, imagination is where that thought will have to stay, because in the year and change since Babygirl became a top-ten hit for A24, Kidman has appeared in one film: Holland, a little-seen thriller that went straight to Amazon in 2025 after a festival debut. Though she has graciously given her time and glamorous image to big-upping the magic of seeing movies in public, projected in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, Kidman doesn’t avoid streaming projects. In fact, since the pandemic era that inspired the AMC spots to begin with, she’s spent more time in streaming movies than theatrical ones. Babygirl and her supporting roles in theatrical releases Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Northman are dwarfed (in terms of screen time) by her leads in The Prom, Being the Ricardos, A Family Affair, and Holland.
Stranger, though, is the fact that it’s hard to even say that Kidman is principally a movie star right now. Yes, she still does at least one movie a year, far more than many in her peer group. But that’s actually a 2020s slowdown for the woman who appeared in a whopping two-dozen movies in the 2010s – mostly in starring roles, too! Kidman’s energies of late have been more focused on starring in every single streaming TV series. Following Big Little Lies and Top of the Lake: China Girl, where most of the attraction seemed to be working with the big-name directors in charge of those series, Kidman went into TV overdrive. Some were prestige miniseries, some were miniseries that became regular series, and some, like her new show Scarpetta, are just straight up crime-thriller procedurals. The week that Scarpetta debuted to middling reviews, a trailer dropped for Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Kidman’s next series (albeit one where Elle Fanning is the actual lead, with Kidman joining fellow ’90s mainstay Michelle Pfeiffer in a supporting part). She’s done seven shows in the 2020s so far (and that’s not counting a few guest spots or Faraway Downs, the reconfigured miniseries version of her film Australia), amounting to around 70 episodes of TV.
Granted, that’s the equivalent of doing three or four seasons of a show on the old network TV model. On the other hand, in screen time that’s equivalent to doing 30-plus movies – and Kidman still obviously has the hunger to play different characters, rather than settle into pure CBS mode. Yet few of these later Kidman series have provided TV counterparts to her eclectic film career, where a crime-investigation story looks more like the bruising, tense Destroyer, or a domestic drama will be hushed and unnerving like Birth. Kidman is an all-time star because she has the charisma to anchor films and shows but the acting chops to give those roles genuine psychological complexity.
Kidman hasn’t given up on cinema. Assuming her AMC promo continues to run indefinitely, it will help introduce a sequel to Practical Magic later this year – amazingly, only the second sequel to one of her movies that she’s made, following Aquaman 2. More promisingly, she should have a second 2026 film with The Young People, a new horror movie from Osgood Perkins (Longlegs). And Hollywood isn’t exactly known for its friendliness to over-40 actresses, so it’s entirely possible streaming TV is simply where more substantial roles are; Kidman obviously loves to work, and seems especially interested in working with female directors, writers, and showrunners.
Maybe one could even project some psychology upon her being the ex-wife of Tom Cruise, who is famously precious about his movie-star image, choosing projects carefully – sometimes too carefully, in the years when he went into image-maintenance overdrive – and championing the theatrical experience above all others. Kidman does some truly idiosyncratic projects, the likes of which Cruise would never touch. Even at her movie-star peak in the early 2000s, she was doing stuff like Dogville or Margot at the Wedding. In a way, her recent forays into streaming TV do highlight the magic of cinema as clearly as the AMC promos: There simply aren’t a lot of shows willing to be as alienating, challenging, or downright strange as Kidman’s most offbeat films. Even the prestigious ones are often incredibly plot-driven and narratively straightforward. It’s one reason why heartbreak doesn’t always feel quite so good on TV.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Guardian, among others.
