Nicole Kidman performed a pro-wrestling scene in “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” while suffering from the flu, and promptly had to be transported to the hospital afterwards.
“We’re there in the morning, we’re getting warmed up — some of us are going to be performing some actual wrestling, and so we have our doubles, we have people we’re working with,” Kidman’s co-star, Nick Offerman, told People of shooting the April 22 episode of the hit comedy.
In the series, Kidman plays a pro wrestler named Lace opposite Offerman’s wrestling garish persona, Jinx — and the two have the opportunity to face off in the ring at a convention.
“And the word comes in that Nicole has the flu, and we might not get Nicole today,” Offerman told the outlet. “And we’re like, ‘Oh no, that’s such a bummer, because we only have the one day that we’ve built this whole circus for.’”
The Oscar winning actress, it turns out, wasn’t about to let a case of the flu slow down the series, for which she’s an executive producer.
“It’s about 8:00 in the morning that we get this news,” Offerman divulged. “Come to be about 11:00 a.m., the word comes in: Nicole’s coming.”
The “Big Little Lies” star was “so sick,” Offerman said — but she made it to work nonetheless.
“She was so pale, shaken,” the “Parks and Recreation” alum shared. “She just had the flu really so bad.”
Still, Kidman “showed up and made sure that we got every shot of her, total superhero style, did everything we needed to so that we did not lose one scrap of what we needed for her character.”
After shooting the physically demanding scene, Kidman “was literally taken to the hospital for an IV.”
“And I just said to her, I already admired you so much, but this is how you get to be Nicole Kidman, is you show up so that your show doesn’t lose a minute of your value,” Offerman gushed.
“It was so generous. It was astonishing.” Kidman, meanwhile, said she was “so scared about getting injured.
“When I got in the ring, I just went, ‘OK, let’s go,’” she told People earlier this month. “‘Cause whenever I do something, I go, ‘OK, I’ve gotta be really careful,’ and then I just forget about any sort of protection in my body, and I go crazy.”
Kidman once gave fans insight into her sterling work ethic. “I came from an industry that’s small and was fighting to survive — the Australian film industry,” she told the New York Times in 2020.
“My whole attitude was get out there and work. There’s no chance of being selective because you’ve got to make money. I didn’t come from an affluent family. It was always about being a working actor.”
Kidman and Offerman aren’t the only A-list actors to appear in “Margo’s Got Money Troubles.”
The star-studded series also features Elle Fanning as Margo, an aspiring writer who becomes pregnant and must find a way to pay her bills, as well as Michelle Pfeiffer, Greg Kinnear, and Marcia Gay Harden, among others.
The AppleTV+ series was created by David E. Kelley and is based on Rufi Thorpe’s novel of the same name.
