Nicole Kidman showed up to film a massive wrestling convention scene on Margo’s Got Money Troubles gripped by the flu, completed every shot the production needed, and was then driven straight to hospital for an intravenous drip. Her co-star Nick Offerman, who witnessed all of it, had a two-word verdict: “Total superhero.”
Offerman described the logistics of the day to People: the set had been built around a wrestling fan convention packed with hundreds of extras, and the whole “circus,” as he put it, had been constructed for a single shooting day. Word arrived at 8 a.m. that Kidman had the flu and might not appear at all. By 11 a.m., she walked through the door.
Offerman recalled that she was “so pale, shaken” and “had the flu really so bad,” yet she “showed up and made sure that we got every shot of her” without losing a single moment of what the scene required. When she finished, she was taken to hospital for an IV.
“I already admired you so much,” Offerman told her, “but this is how you get to be Nicole Kidman — you show up so that your show doesn’t lose a minute of your value. It was so generous. It was astonishing.”
The effort was physical long before the cameras rolled. Offerman himself trained for three weeks with Chavo Guerrero Jr. and a team of professional wrestlers ahead of filming. Kidman, 58, told reporters at the show’s New York City premiere that the role frightened her going in: “Obviously, it’s so hard, and I was so scared about getting injured, but then when I got in the ring, I just went, ‘Okay, let’s go.'” She added that the experience had left her wanting to return to the sport: “I would love to do more wrestling.”
Kidman plays Lace, a retired wrestler turned legal mediator — a character invented for the television adaptation that does not appear in Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 source novel. Showrunner David E. Kelley says Kidman was drawn to the project by her love of the book and was eager to participate wherever the schedule allowed. Kelley told Deadline that he had braced for her to balk at the role’s physical demands, then watched her do the opposite. “Can I jump in the ring and actually wrestle?” she asked. She was, Kelley said, “believable in the ring, and believable as a lawyer.”
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Margo’s Got Money Troubles marks Kidman’s fourth collaboration with Kelley, following Big Little Lies, The Undoing, and Nine Perfect Strangers. The series, which stars Elle Fanning as the title character alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Greg Kinnear, and Michael Angarano, premiered on Apple TV+ on April 15, 2026, and currently holds a 96 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. New episodes drop every Wednesday through May 20.
