White Woman Too White to Say 'N-Word'

Thank you again, BBC, for once again providing me with comedy stylings at the last precious minute.

Short version: Director asked her to use the word "nigger" in a movie set in Florida in the late '60s, a time and place where one would find many current and former convicts, many old people, and many racist people. Kidman immediately refused. Black costar was pleased by this.

However, what does this say about Kidman?

As an actor: Nicole Kidman lets her personal beliefs and feelings get in the way of providing an authentic performance. So does her actual performance, but now it's clear she's comfortable being naked on camera or playing "a blowsy hairdresser who has won the trust of the felon through sexually explicit correspondence," but not behaving dislikably as a character.

As a white person: She's not a moron. White people don't get to say that word without some serious shit going down.

Are they whitewashing the movie? No.

Thankfully, a different character still drops the N-bomb to make the movie historically accurate even if Kidman was afraid to:

Zac Efron.

Yes, Nicole Kidman is so desperate to be liked by the movie-going public that she will not use a certain word that would make her seem unlikeable or harshly antagonistic, even if it is a part of her character and her director explicitly asks this of her. However Zac Efron will probably use it a dozen times à la Shia LaBeouf's cursing in I, Robot.

"Look at me, I'm not a child actor anymore! I swear and look at asses and appear in movies not produced or sanctioned by the Disney Channel!"

Except Zac already made his jump to adult cinema. Yeah, it was Carlie St. Cloud and some other Nicholas-Sparks-esque 'chick-flic' garbage without any reality to speak of, but he's already playing characters over 20. He doesn't need to drink and smoke on camera to look older.

Which means Zac Efron said "nigger" on film because it was the right thing to do to make a better movie, and when his director said so, he did it because the whole story is more important than one snooty bitch of an actor's ego.