Kidman stars as Erin Bell, an LAPD Detective haunted by her undercover past, who finds herself in the crossfire of her history once again when an old gang leader resurfaces. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Kusama described Kidman’s character as a woman who “wears her ugliness on the outside, all that smallness and bitterness.” Even though “the character is so sort of tragic, and ultimately heroic.” That meant another transformation for Kidman. “We always knew that what we wanted her to look like was a real middle-aged woman with a past that she wears on her face,” Kusama said. With sun damage and sleep deprivation and stress and rage, just in her whole physical body.”
Destroyer reunites Kusama with The Invitation screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, but this time the creative trio is leaving behind the social paranoia of suburbia in favor of the criminal underworld. “We’ve all loved bank robbery stories as a place to start, because they almost never go well,” Kusama said. “There’s a kind of particular American madness to thinking you’ll be the one who gets away clean. We were really focusing on characters who weren’t criminal masterminds, but fringe dwellers of American society. Yet they still hold out the hope that they’d beat the system.
Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Bradley Whitford, Jade Pettyjohn, and Scoot McNairy also star. The film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival next moth and arrives in theaters this Christmas, on December 25.
