Is Nicole Kidman lying about her divorce meme? Signs point to yes

Another day on the internet, another meme origin story complicated.
In an interview with British GQ released this week, Nicole Kidman nods to her many memes — her weird clapping, her AMC ad — and says she’ll take it all, in the name of art. But she does have a few corrections: namely that she clapped strangely because of the jewelry she was wearing at the time (“’Cause I had a massive heavy borrowed ring on and it was really painful, and I was scared of wrecking the jewellery,” she laughs), and that the iconic post-divorce celebration meme is actually from filming a movie.
Except I paused at the last revelation, because as best I can tell, that doesn’t appear to be true. Let’s go to the tapes (the internet, in this case).
Kidman claims in British GQ that the meme photo is decidedly not “real”: “That was not me; that was from a film, that wasn’t real life. I know that image!”
The image seems to have been taken on Aug. 8, 2001. (This assigned date is taken from Know Your Meme, as best as it was able to trace it. But more on that later.) That would’ve been about six months after she filed her divorce papers to Tom Cruise, and possibly during a gap in her filming schedule: The Hours filmed between January and June 2001. Dogville, the next thing she acted in, didn’t start filming until January 2002.
Even if these were a part of reshoots, the outfit doesn’t seem to fit with either film. In fact, given that Nicole Kidman’s iconic sheer pink shirt and lime green pants from the photo don’t appear in any of her filmography, there’s a few options I see here, if we take her at her word that it’s from a film:
It’s from a deleted scene of a movie — but I’m not sure which that would be, since neither the look nor the mood seem reflective of her work from the period.
This is from behind the scenes , and “from a film” is a slip of the tongue for “in the course of making a film.” None of the roles she was in around this time seem to lend themselves to this sort of gleeful celebration, but maybe it’s a deleted scene for a reason!
She’s practicing for a music video since, in December of that year, Kidman did release a cover of “Somethin’ Stupid” with Robbie Williams, which had an since, in December of that year, Kidman did release a cover of “Somethin’ Stupid” with Robbie Williams, which had an accompanying video . Neither of them has any sort of real dance number in the video, certainly not as open and full-throated as Kidman appears here. But: Williams and Kidman are rumored to have dated, which could add a bit more pizzazz to, say, walking down the street and grooving/practicing to a cutesy love duet with your boyfriend. (Adding some complication to this theory: They might not have been romantically linked until a brief stint in 2004 . Who knows!)
I’m most convinced by the last one, but, even still, it’s a stretch to say Kidman considered that was “from a film.” Again, I’m simply not convinced this was “acting” insofar as she seems to call it here — specifically from a film, not merely for one.
The plot only thickens further (I know, like we needed a thicker plot when we’ve really figured out very little beyond “hmmm” here!) when we consider the culture of the time. There is an article in the Irish Independent from Aug. 12, 2001, claiming the photo was taken the week before (seemingly substantiating the Aug. 8 date). Kidman and Cruise finalized their divorce on Aug. 10, 2001, and the neighborhood of her lawyers’ office does allow for the same neighborhood vibe you get in the extended glimpses of her strut. The article goes further, claiming:
The astonishing emotional performance happened in the middle of a Los Angeles street. Yet it was not a scene from one of the Hollywood star’s movies. Instead, it was the 34-year-old actress’s way of celebrating signing the papers that end her marriage to Tom Cruise. It came as she left the Los Angeles offices of her lawyers, having put her name to the quickie divorce which was granted last week by the US Superior Court. Six months after 39-year-old Cruise dropped the bombshell news that he wanted a divorce, Miss Kidman celebrated her freedom with a cry which also served to vent her pent-up rage and frustration. An onlooker said: “She walked out of the offices, threw back her head and arms and let out this amazing cry. She was crying out half way down the street as she walked along. It was obviously a very emotional moment.”
Two key things to consider about Hollywood culture, particularly for the period, here: (1) It is very common for paparazzi and celebrity gossip reporters to fabricate stories. (2) It is also very true that stars have worked with gossip magazines since time immemorial (or: the advent of Hollywood a century ago) to get coverage. The article goes out of its way to mention that Kidman (and Cruise, as a producer) had a film premiere for The Others also on Aug. 10. Given that reporting at the time said she and Cruise engaged in protracted legal battles and “public relations one-upmanship,” it seems likely that this divorce performance could be just that: a performance. It might be advantageous to flood the headlines with something to counteract the release of her new erotic thriller, and get ahold of the narrative.
All of this is stuff she can’t say directly 23 years later when asked about it. More importantly, we don’t need the photos to be confirmed to be about Kidman’s divorce filing to celebrate them in meme form. Memes aren’t really about the original situation we pull them from; they’re whatever meaning we imbue them with. You can see that with something like Pepe the Frog, whose meaning shifted dramatically when he became an emblem for far-right posters. But you can also see that in other pop culture memes — when people use Don Draper’s “I don’t think about you at all” line as a punchline, they’re not really thinking about how Don does think (and at times even feels threatened by) Ginsberg. It’s just a pithy way to tell someone they’re reaching. That someone can post the photos of Kidman to commemorate their own divorce is its own reference point, whether or not she says they’re from a movie and therefore not “real.”
There isn’t much monoculture left in the zeitgeist. Something that cascades across X — your Brat memes, or DNC vibes-based campaign strategies — may barely reach friends of yours who aren’t on the platform. Memes like this don’t just roll through the internet like a snowball because they are easy to repost and reinterpret; it’s because the emotion we bring to them overlays them with an innate feeling and shared understanding, smoothing over cracks in comprehension like water on dry clay. I think Nicole Kidman did this strut, and maybe these photos are for a film(’s promotion) rather than from one. But it doesn’t really matter. We can all feel what that photo really means. Like Kidman, I welcome the chances we get at performing little moods like this with open arms, basking in the warm glow of sweet, sweet relief; a little joke we put out in the world with glee.