Michelle Rodriguez Felt Nicole Kidman Couldn’t Win an Oscar for This Film Because ‘You Can’t Just Be Trashy’
Zac Efron once had a much-talked about love scene with on-screen partner Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy. Efron’s ex-partner, Michelle Rodriguez, was one of many who saw the feature. And she was as candid as usual about her thoughts.
Michelle Rodriguez’s response to Zac Efron’s love scenes with Nicole Kidman
Rodriguez confided that she enjoyed The Paperboy, although that didn’t seem to be the popular opinion at the time. The movie was a Matthew McConaughey-led picture directed by Lee Daniels, and featured several stars including John Cusack and David Oyelowo. Despite its star-power, the movie received mixed-reviews that leaned over to the negative. But Rodriguez didn’t care for the critics’ opinion.
“I say f*** them because they don’t get it,” Rodriguez once told Vulture. “He’s so good at keeping me entertained. When I don’t like the dialogue, I’m amused by the visuals. And when I don’t like the visuals, I’m amused by the dialogue. It’s always switching up senses. I’m intrigued by his ability to capture me in a theater. It’s not easy to capture me in a theater — I’m ADD like that.”
Roderiguez also commented on Efron’s love scene with Kidman. It was another part of the movie that she thoroughly enjoyed. But she doubted that Kidman would get another Oscar for the movie due to the character she played.
“I f***ing loved it,” Rodriguez said. “One of my friends said, ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for that.’ I was like, ‘Nah, man. She’s not black!’ I laugh, but it’s also very sad. It makes me want to cry. But I really believe. You have to be trashy and black to get nominated. You can’t just be trashy.”
How Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron felt about their ‘Paperboy’ love scene
Both Efron and Kidman looked back at their intimacy in the feature fondly. Efron joked that the love scene lived up to his expectations and thensome.
“She’s [Kidman] my love interest… Nicole is so gorgeous. It was everything you dreamed of. She was such a lovely person. I pinch myself everyday, especially after doing love scenes with Nicole Kidman,” he once said according to Yahoo. “It was the highlight of my life. Nicole was something else and was always in character. She didn’t get weird method, like some actors do, but I have never seen anyone so centered.”
Kidman took a more technical approach when looking back at her love scene with the High School Musical star. Although it was scripted, there was a chemistry between the pair that allowed the two to click early on.
“Everything in the film was spontaneous. It was caught on the day. Obviously there was a script. But at the same time, a lot of the stuff just evolved and happened. That’s what makes it like a bit of a tightrope walk. And probably what [made] the film erratic at times and unpredictable, which is what Lee wanted. He wanted it to look like we shot it in 1968. And he wanted to be kind of flawed,” she said to Awards Daily in a 2012 interview.
Were Michelle Rodriguez and Zac Efron in a relationship when ‘The Paperboy’ was released
Rodriguez and Efron were reportedly an item for a brief period of time. They were linked together in 2014, although they kept much of their relationship under wraps. Their fling only lasted for a couple of months, with Rodriguez once noting she was terrible at maintaining long-term relationships.
“I could never last more than six months with somebody,” Rodriguez once revealed to Interview.
Given that the film was released two years earlier, it seems Efron and Rodriguez weren’t together back then. Which means that Efron most likely had no influence on her opinion of The Paperboy.
