First Look: Nicole Kidman is sweaty-sexy in ‘The Paperboy’

Meriah Doty

We knew Nicole Kidman was getting a bit trashy for her role in the much talked about film "The Paperboy," but the film's first trailer reveals a lot more about her southern drawling character with a seeming incurable case of the vapors.

Set in the sweaty late-sixties South, Kidman's often-sexually-aroused character Charlotte Bless is bent on proving Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) has been wrongly convicted of murdering a Florida sheriff.

"Hillary and I are engaged to be married," Bless says as she begins a campaign to get him out of jail -- a reveal about the nature of their relationship. (Though we also know that Bless has a strange habit of communicating with death row inmates -- It's likely the two struck up their romance via snail-mailed written letters.)

So where does that leave Zac Efron, who has bragged about his love scenes with Kidman in press interviews? Efron plays Jack Jansen -- a young man who helps Bless with her case. The two become close -- so close they have an affair and, ahem, a pee scene (Bless does the honors in an attempt to relieve Jack after he is stung by a jellyfish).

Director Lee Daniels spoke of the scene in an interview with GQ: "Right before I sent it off to Cannes, I called Nicole at three in the morning. I said, 'Nicole, I can't do it, I've gone too far. I can't put that scene in the movie.' She said, 'Lee, you made me pee on Zac Efron, if you don't put that in the movie, you're out of your freakin' mind. I did it! I did it!'"

In the trailer we also get to see Matthew McConaughey, greasy hair and all, as Ward, a reporter who has returned to his childhood town to look into a murder. Cusack, apparently expanding his repertoire, plays a meat-head who needs McConaughey's help.

"The Paperboy," based on a Pete Dexter murder mystery novel, won a lot of buzz -- good and bad -- when it screened at Cannes earlier this year. Directed by Daniels, who helmed the Oscar-winning 2009 film "Precious," the style of "The Paperboy" is said to be similarly authentic, unafraid to show the damaged and tarnished side of American living.

"The Paperboy" lands in select theaters October 5.

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