Watch Harris Dickinson's steamy, shirtless 'Father Figure' dance for Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl ”(exclusive)

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Babygirl.

In Babygirl, Nicole Kidman plays a woman, Romy, who decides to unleash and indulge her sexual fantasies with her much younger intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson).

Those fantasies include watching him dance shirtless to George Michael's iconic song "Father Figure," about a man offering to be his partner's "father figure" in their romantic relationship. It's a potent, even somewhat funny scene, and writer-director Halina Reijn felt the track was so crucial to her vision for the film that she had it in mind before writing a word of the script.

"I had the idea for the powerful woman running a robotics company and an intern dominating her sexually," she tells Entertainment Weekly. "That was it. I didn't have anything on paper. But one thing I knew I wanted was 'Father Figure.' This song came before the full scripts, before the first page, before the first treatment, anything."

She adds, "I wanted to use that song because I knew I wanted to make a comedy of manners about power and consent and sex and control. That song embodies, for me, the whole thing that I'm trying to do, which is put everything on its head and turn it inside out."

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Reijn was so determined to use the song that she called A24's production executive, Noah Sacco, multiple times throughout filming to ask him to get the rights. "After I wrote the script, they were still like, 'Well, shoot the movie first,'" she recounts. "So, I shot the whole movie, and then it was like. 'No, edit it first,' and then I edited the whole thing. Then, of course, when they saw the scene, they were like, 'Okay, okay, yeah, we get it.'"

Reijn even shot the scene to the song's rhythm despite not knowing if they would get clearance. "I gave [Harris] the song very early on before we started shooting," she notes. "It's always risky because if you put the song on set and he dances to that rhythm, and we don't get the rights, and you have to put in another song, then you're stuck in the rhythm. But I was like, 'If we don't get this song, I'm going to die, so I'm just going to pretend that we have the song.'"

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For Reijn, George Michael also represents the push-and-pull of the gender and power dynamics at the heart of the film. "I remember being a young woman and really being in love with him," she says of the singer. "Thinking he was straight and the hottest man on the planet, especially when he was singing 'Father Figure.' But then, slowly, we all found out that he was suppressing a lot of his sexuality to the outside world and just wanted to belong. He created this image of this classically straight, cocky, macho guy. My movie is about that in a way, too. It's a cautionary tale about what happens if you suppress parts of yourself."

Reijn actually got the idea for the scene as a reversal of a memorable moment in 1986's 9 1/2 weeks. "I based my scene on Kim Basinger dancing to 'Take Your Head Off ' by Joe Cocker for Mickey Rourke, while Mickey Rourke is just sitting there. I thought, 'We have to reverse that. We have to have Nicole sit there and have Harris dance in almost a vulnerable way.'"

While directing the scene, Reijn sought to give Dickinson the ideal environment to maximize his comfort and to emphasize the scene's viewpoint from the female gaze. "We emptied out that whole huge hotel room," she says. "There was nobody there; it was just the DP and the intimacy coordinator. But even me and the intimacy coordinator were behind the wall. So, it was just Nicole, Harris, the speaker that was playing the song, and Jasper Wolf, my DP."

Related: Nicole Kidman is Harris Dickinson's 'good girl' in the wickedly sexy Babygirl trailer

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Reijn also resisted giving Dickinson much blocking, encouraging him to dance as if no one was watching, not even Kidman's character. "I said, 'You're dancing for yourself,'" she notes. "'You're just in your own world and a little bit drunk probably. You're just dancing with yourself.' And I told my DP, 'You are also dancing. Both of you should dance.'

"Me and Nicole should watch and the man should be dancing," she adds. "That was how I had it in my mind. He had to end up at her chair, but the rest of it was free. We did two takes, I think. What he embodied in that dance for me is sensual but also very vulnerable. It is masculine, but it's also very boyish. You could see the discomfort and the enjoyment at the same time."

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