Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage, Jean Baptiste Lacroix/AFP via Getty Images
All of us are going to live for a very, very long time and definitely don’t have anything (globally, economically, climatologically) to worry about for the foreseeable, so it’s a little fun, maybe, to consider what it would feel like to die. Your breath slows, your eyes flicker, and then suddenly, who is that hovering above you, walking you through your body shutting down? Oh, that’s just Nicole Kidman, of course, from Scarpetta. She’s explaining the “death rattle” to your loved ones in the same way she talks in the AMC pre-roll. It’s simultaneously haunting and comforting — why is she wearing a wig? — and the last thing you see before you drift off into the Great Beyond.
Okay, so you probably won’t personally get Nicole Kidman as your death doula, but somebody could. During a talk at the University of San Francisco on April 11, Kidman revealed that she started her training after her mother passed away in 2024. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Hamnet director Chloé Zhao said that she is also training to be a death doula in the hopes of combatting her own fear of dying. It’s almost as if everyone in Hollywood is filled with an ambient fear of industry collapse and is looking for a new career path … that, or death is really scary and anything we can do to ease the transition is probably good for us all.
If Kidman and Zhao are deep in the trenches of their death-doula training, what other highly successful and/or award-winning actors and directors might excel at this job? Colman Domingo has a great, soothing voice that could really help you process your final days. Paul Dano seems like he has the right kind of sensitivity for the job. Benedict Cumberbatch? Too easy. Marisa Abela would be great at this, but she’s probably too busy and too young to be concerned about what happens as we’re dying. No one on the Euphoria cast seems especially happy to be doing that, so it could be an option for that whole group. If nothing else, Kidman should rally the rest of her Big Little Lies castmates as a roving band of blonde soothsayers and harbingers of eternal sleep. Maybe then they can start talking about a third season.
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