Producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher of Red Wagon Entertainment had long entertained the idea of turning the beloved romantic comedy series Bewitched into a feature film.

“We always saw the movie as a love story between the most otherworldly of women and the most earthly of men,” he says of Bewitched lead character, Nicole Kidman.

“Nicole’s statuesque beauty gives her the perfect, witchy exterior. Her brilliance as an actress makes her credible as a woman with supernatural powers. Then, there’s the added bonus of Nicole’s nose and its miraculous similarity to that of Elizabeth Montgomery’s.”

However, it was Nora Ephron who came up with the concept that convinced Nicole Kidman to commit.

“I told her this basic idea of a witch in 2005 who is cast in a remake of the television show purely on the grounds that she looks exactly like Elizabeth Montgomery and would be no competition for the guy who is the lead in the show because he doesn’t really want an equal relationship with an actress,” says Ephron. “That was the beginning of it.”

Nicole Kidman admits that her initial interest in Bewitched was rooted in nostalgia. Soon she realized that the project could be much more, offering her the rare opportunity to work in a romantic comedy under the direction of a filmmaker who clearly loves, and is constantly redefining, the genre.

“Everyone always told me I looked so much like Elizabeth Montgomery, so that was the first thing that got me interested in the possibility of a film version,” says Nicole Kidman. “As a little girl, I watched almost every episode of the series. However, when Nora said she would write and direct, I thought, well, this is something I have to do. It was great to see her slowly construct this very, very clever dual story.”

The versatile Kidman not only looks like Montgomery but shares the rare talent to adorably twitch her nose. The role of Isabel is much different from many of the darker, edgy characters Kidman has played of late such as her Oscar-winning turn as the suicidal Virginia Woolf in The Hours or the doomed courtesan Satine in the musical romance Moulin Rouge which brought her another Academy Award nomination.

Isabel is striving to be the prototypical girl-next-door and is an ingenuous delight, even when she is being undermined by those she trusts and by her own special powers. The results are deliciously comical and appealing. 

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