Baz Luhrmann on His 'Deep' Bond with Nicole Kidman: We've Shared the 'Most Traumatic Moments' (Exclusive)

The director and the actress first met while working on an issue of Vogue Australia together

Baz Luhrmann is confident that he'll always have a "deep friend" in Nicole Kidman.

The Elvis director has collaborated with the Oscar winner numerous times, including on the 2001 movie musical Moulin Rouge and the upcoming Hulu miniseries Faraway Downs, his expansion of their 2008 film Australia.

The filmmaker, 61, tells PEOPLE that his relationship with the actress extends quite a bit beyond their work, explaining that they've gone through "some of the most traumatic moments in our life together."

"She famously went through an extraordinarily high-profile breakup with her then-husband on Moulin Rouge," Luhrmann recalls, referencing Kidman's split from Tom Cruise in 2001. "I lost my father on the first day of shooting. And on Australia, she actually got pregnant. She really wanted to get pregnant with children. And so we've been through many, many life experiences together."

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He says that his first encounter with Kidman, 56, came as a result of collaborating together on an issue of Vogue Australia. "I was co-editing an issue of Vogue, it was Australian Vogue, and we were going to L.A. and I wanted her in it. We were fast friends," he recalls.

Luhrmann adds, "[You] have artists that you become really close with. You have artists that you work professionally with, but you wouldn't say you'd pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, I'm in town.' But Nicole is one of a few artists who have been deep [and] is a deep friend."

According to Luhrmann, Kidman's family is a big fan of their movie Australia, which co-starred Hugh Jackman, and has now been expanded into Faraway Downs. "She rang me," he recalls, "And she said, 'Oh, Bazzy, I played Australia to the family the other day, and it's their favorite film of mine.'

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He says that things between him and Kidman have long been "nothing but extraordinary."

"I'll tell you what Nicole and I have, and she [is] equally a friend. We have extraordinary memories of the making of that movie," he says of shooting Australia with her. "You'll never actually quite have an experience like that again, because we just don't make movies like that anymore. We don't go out into the middle of a foreboding desert landscape with an indigenous community and with cattlemen building cattle stations and houses in the middle of nowhere. I mean, the Sahara Desert is easier to work in than Northern Australia. There's better cell reception."

Luhrmann tells PEOPLE he's aware that he's a creature of habit when it comes to casting for his projects. "You can see historically when I find someone, like whether it's Leonardo [DiCaprio] or Hugh or Nicole, Austin [Butler], now I'm getting into a list for anyone I've left off the list," he says. "But when you really connect with an actor, you know that they always have more strings to their instrument than they'll ever have time to play. And one of the great joys for me is to reunite with someone that I not only have worked with before, but that I love working with."

"It's a joy," he adds about these reunions. "And you have a shorthand when you've worked before. So it's just a question. I never actually go, 'I want to do something with X.' I always go, 'What story do I need to tell at first for myself?' And then, 'How's it going to be useful putting it out there in the world?' And then I have to go through the process of going, 'Well, who's best?' "

Faraway Downs will be available to stream on Hulu on Nov. 26.

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