Nicole Kidman response to Tom Cruise divorce resurfaces amid Keith Urban breakup

Nicole Kidman is going viral for a spicy comment about her headline-making divorce — but not her most recent one.

Amid news that the Oscar-winning actress is ending her 19-year marriage to country star Keith Urban, an infamous Kidman remark about her ex-husband Tom Cruise has resurfaced online.

The moment in question came during an interview on The Late Show With David Letterman in August 2001, as Kidman appeared on the show to promote her film The Others (which was executive-produced by Cruise). The interview occurred several months after Cruise and Kidman — who met on the set of Days of Thunder and married in 1990 — announced that they were splitting up.

David Letterman began the interview by addressing the elephant in the room: “I heard you’re getting divorced — how’s that going?”

Kidman awkwardly giggled as Letterman repeatedly asked if things were all right, and she eventually responded that the breakup had prompted “a lot of questions.” She then not-so-subtly poked fun at Cruise’s height.

“Well, I can wear heels now,” Kidman said, grabbing one of her shoes and smirking. After several seconds of audience applause, she insisted, “Let’s move on.”

Without heels, Kidman stands 5’11” — taller than both Cruise (5’7″) and Urban (5’10”).

Kidman has occasionally reflected on her marriage to Cruise, with whom she also starred in Ron Howard’s Far and Away and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. In 2020, she debunked the notion that Kubrick’s erotic thriller put a strain on the marriage.

“We were happily married through that,” she told The New York Times. “We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at 3 in the morning. I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I don’t have the ability to look back and dissect it. Or I’m not willing to.”

Cruise also recently recalled working with Kidman on Eyes Wide Shut, which sees the two actors play a New York couple navigating the complications of lust and distrust. “I suggested Nicole play the role [of Alice],” the Mission: Impossible star told Sight & Sound. “Because, obviously, she’s a great actress.”

Kidman previously said she thinks she was “impulsive and naive” during her marriage to Cruise, which began when she was 23 and he was 28. “We were in a bubble,” she told DuJour in 2012. “Just the two of us. We became very dependent on one another.”

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At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, Kidman remembered how her marriage to Cruise provided “protection” from sexual harassment in Hollywood. “I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed,” she wrote in The Cut. “I would work, but I was still very much cocooned. So when I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.”

News of Kidman’s split from Urban broke Monday. A source told PEOPLE that Kidman “didn’t want” to break up, and that “she has been fighting to save the marriage.” 

A day later, Entertainment Weekly confirmed that Kidman filed for divorce from Urban in Nashville. The estranged couple share two children: Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14.