What Hollywood Got Wrong About Nicole Kidman's Portrayal of a Tech CEO in Babygirl

It’s the annual holiday party for a publicly traded robotics automation business that powers warehouse operations for Amazon-like clients all over the world. The NYC interns get a little too loose, one drops a tie amidst all of the dancing. The next day, the high-powered CEO, played by Nicole Kidman, shows up at the office mid-morning as the cleaning crew arrives. Strewn about the mess, she spots the intern’s tie, picks it up, and carries it back to her office like a sexy trophy—the start of what ultimately ignites a weeks-long, rule-breaking illicit affair.

I know we’re all thinking the same thing. So let me be the first to say it: This is a completely unrealistic portrayal of what it’s like to be a tech company CEO.

In the movie, Babygirl, “Tensile” is a fictitious robotics company supposedly revolutionizing the shipping and delivery operations of Amazon-style warehouses. But that’s where the reality of what it’s like to actually run a tech company begins and ends for me.

Hollywood, take note—I’ve got a few notes on how to really ramp up the business side believability for the next one. Let’s break it down, shall we?

• "First-in-the-office" fantasy. The idea that the CEO could casually walk into the office with the mid-morning sun high and still be the first into work is an extreme delusion. She’d need to be in shortly after dawn in order to beat out the over-eager interns and junior sales employees who would surely be driving themselves crazy trying to hit year-end targets to hit their annual bonuses.

• The cleaning crew schedule. No tech company operating at their supposed level would wait until the following morning for the cleaning crew to arrive; that office would have been pristine by midnight.

• The party location. A lot of online commenters seem to think her company is operating at an Amazon level of scale, but things just don’t add up. Based on the small kitchen area in office (which doubles as the party location) I’m inclined to believe one of two things:

  • A) The real HQ is on the West Coast, and this is just the NYC business and sales hub, making Nicole Kidman’s functional role less like the global CEO and more like a regional GM (which would also explain the lack of peer executives and robotics engineers in her orbit).

  • B) It’s a much smaller business than we’re led to believe, maybe pre-public or recently public, but definitely not a behemoth yet.

Either way, one thing is for sure: Their holiday party wouldn’t be at the office. Any good NYC CEO would have known to rent out the Bowery Hotel rooftop or Chelsea Piers months in advance.

Here are some other things that Hollywood got wrong.

Now let’s unpack some of the glaring omissions about the tech company itself. These are the dead giveaways that Hollywood doesn’t quite get what it’s really like to work in tech:

1. Off-cycle intern hiring. The most laughable part of the movie is the idea that a major tech company would onboard a fresh intern class in December—the busiest season for holiday shipping and deliveries. No company would have the bandwidth for this, especially one supposedly running at Tensile’s scale. Interns are hired in the spring and start in the summer, not during the peak of holiday chaos.

2. Insufficient tech vibes. From intern orientation to the holiday party and even the conference room scenes, I found myself asking the same question: Where’s the swag? Tech companies are obsessed with their logos. A few branded hoodies, water bottles, or ID badges would have gone a long way. Even more notable: For a robotics company, the entire office was suspiciously devoid of any actual tech hardware. And let’s talk about the company name—Tensile? Come on. Swap a vowel. Tensyl is way more believable.

3. General lack of urgency and people. In the run-up to the holidays, you’d expect the office to be packed with people, for every conference room to be booked, and for near-daily emergencies with suppliers, investors, or customers. But the office is suspiciously empty for large parts of the movie. That a CEO and an intern manage to book conference rooms with nobody else banging down the door at the top of the hour also raises an eyebrow. Also, anyone who’s had a tense conversation with a boss knows you can hear anything through conference room walls; the so-called soundproofing is yet another Hollywood daydream.

Look, I love Nicole Kidman as much as the next person, but let’s be honest—she’s a lot better at faking other things than she is at pretending to be a business executive. Here’s some radical candor on her management style and executive presence:

• Questionable real experience with technology. At no point in the movie does Nicole Kidman’s character say anything remotely intelligent about technology or robots. She also didn’t use nearly enough tech-enabled platforms to get her work done. On the rare occasion when we see her entire desktop, we see only an unnamed email client (neither Gmail nor Microsoft Outlook), and no evidence of Slack whatsoever. Finally, the plot point about the intern needing to visit her at her second home in the Hamptons to return a laptop that she supposedly forgot at work would never happen. Obviously CEOs never travel with her own laptops; she’d have one at work and a second one for home.

• Way too much time managing down. Throughout the film, the CEO consistently spends far too much time with junior-level reports (her assistant, and the intern of intrigue) and not nearly enough time interfacing with senior-level peers and executives. I wasn’t surprised that her team encouraged her to participate in the intern mentor program—but it’s downright business negligence that we never even see her lead a team meeting or investor call. A little boardroom drama would have added much-needed business intrigue. Given that the movie takes place in the lead-up to the holiday season, you’d expect at least a Q4 board meeting or some tense investor dealings.

• Poor time management skills. I’m sorry, but no CEO at her level would prioritize packing lunches or organizing birthday parties for her kids during the most hectic time of the year. Leave that for the nanny (and kids would clearly buy their own lunches). Her midday work jaunts were equally implausible. As a female tech executive whose husband also happens to have a high-powered theatre job, let me tell you: There’s zero time for casual midday visits to the theatre. (And for the record, even in rehearsal mode, that theatre would have been packed with designers and stage managers—not nearly that empty.) More importantly, where was the business travel? Are we really supposed to believe that a CEO of a major tech company had no travel obligations for the entire month of December? She should have been jetting off to other offices, meeting with investors, or visiting key clients—not sneaking out of her midtown HQ to secret hotel rooms.

To be fair, Hollywood didn’t get everything wrong. I would be remiss to omit two of the most believable parts of her portrayal as a CEO:

• The Two Holiday Homes:
  It’s completely on-brand for a NYC tech CEO to have a sleek midtown high-rise home and a place out East. If anything, they didn’t take this storyline far enough—she’d likely have a few more properties across the country, perfect for hosting some, ahem, important business meetings. 

• Ignoring Promotion Requests:
  Take it from someone who’s been there: Getting repeated pushback or delays around promotion conversations from a work superior is a tale as old as time. Blatantly pushing off her assistant’s eager requests for advancement hit almost too close to home.

In conclusion, while it’s refreshing to see Hollywood embrace the idea of a female tech CEO, they might consider trading steamy affairs and deserted offices for some high-stakes boardroom drama and a lot more Slack notifications—now that’s a story tech execs could actually relate to.