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  • 1 week ago
Naomi Watts is shining a light on disability and healing from trauma with an unlikely hero at its center in her uplifting new drama 'Penguin Bloom.' Watts and costar Andrew Lincoln open up about connecting with the real life Bloom family.
Transcript
00:00of course this was based on the true story of sam bloom and her family naomi how did you first
00:17come across this story the book came to me through my friend emma cooper who's also a producing
00:23partner and uh she sent it to me and said tell me what you think call me after you read it and i
00:29read it on a sunday morning with my children in bed um leafing through the pages of and being
00:36completely drawn in by these beautiful images of this creature this little tiny bird i just felt
00:42really like drawn in by um this moment that i was having with my children this family unity and how
00:51that would translate in in the telling of this story on the screen and i saw the magic of this bird
00:58um creating the unity and the and the repair of one's hope you want to erase yourself who you were
01:06she's still you sam andrew this is your first feature project since departing the walking dead
01:15a little bit of a different role but how are you able to connect to playing cameron and what were
01:20those conversations with him like as soon as i agreed to do the project he was we were skyping
01:26one another i sort of bombarded him with a thousand ridiculous questions and and then i went out and
01:32i went surfing with his family and we hung out and we just spent time and i and i suppose the key thing
01:39that i said why do you want what what do you want of this film what is the thing you most want he said i
01:45want them to get that we're soulmates that throughout this terrible trauma this family that that it is
01:52ultimately a love story you know in sickness and in health she doesn't want to be stuck inside does
01:57she boys and i were struggling you're struggling yes it's all of us naomi you had to learn how to be
02:05in a wheelchair for a majority of this film did you have any learning curves with that or was it easy or
02:11difficult to navigate i had to practice a lot and um read a lot about it and um sam again being the
02:20generous soul that she is sent video footage over before i got there of her um making transferring
02:28from bed to chair and um and it's not an easy thing to do um even getting lifted by someone andrew had
02:37multiple moments where we were he was having to lift me up but thankfully um sam was there on the set
02:42monitoring things and um and she was really able to you know put me set me straight when when things
02:50went awry hello maybe should have left it there she needs a night penguin the other star of this
03:01film was of course penguin this was a real life magpie that you both acted alongside what was that
03:07experience like andrew was it difficult were they well behaved what was that like we had seven uh magpies
03:13uh so when one of them got tired or full because they're sort of uh this extraordinary guy paul would
03:21feed them with live worms they only uh responded to the live worms um it sounds really gruesome doesn't
03:29it i'm surprised that there were seven that there were seven of them i thought this was just one
03:33extraordinary bird as it grew because obviously it's it spans you know the growth from the the chick to
03:40obviously a full-grown flying bird and also it was augmented by cgi a couple of times when they
03:47were flying shots and then also i think that there was a puppet as well an animatronic puppet but these
03:54birds were extraordinary must be weird to have wings and not be able to fly naomi you of course mentioned
04:01that sam and her family were very involved in the filming process what was something that you took away
04:06from your conversations with her well firstly i was blown away by the generosity i mean she she not
04:12only shared her house and you know dark secrets of everything her family members her mom i met her
04:20friends but she also shared her diaries um in the lead up which were deeply personal and gut-wrenching i
04:29sobbed and sobbed when i read these words on the page you know and truly got closer to understanding
04:35you know what a private hell that she was living in really understood her her strength it's an
04:42inspiring story being on set and i had my family naomi had my actual family with us we there was an
04:49extraordinary atmosphere of a a sort of culture on set that was really really conducive to being as
04:56honest and as true and as open and also honoring this extraordinary true story turns out magpies make
05:03for life totally monogamous maybe that explains why they're so miserable
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