Naomi Watts on Penguin Bloom, acting after 40 and her cancelled Game Of Thrones prequel

Naomi Watts tells why the Aussie story behind her new film reduced her to tears and how she felt about her Game Of Thrones prequel being cancelled.

The coming movie adaptation of much loved book Penguin Bloom was exactly the project Naomi Watts had been looking for.

Not only was the Oscar-nominated Aussie actor inspired by its themes of hope, survival and family, it also gave her the first opportunity in seven years to work in her homeland and, as an added bonus, with some of her best friends.

“This was the perfect one for many reasons,” says Watts, adding she’s always on the lookout for Australian projects. “Mainly, this unique story of her survival and her family and how important the whole family structure was and the repairing of that broken family. Also, the fact that I was there filming it with my family, with my two best friends, who are my producing partners.”

Penguin Bloom tells the true story of the Bloom family, which is shattered when mother Sam (played by Watts) is left paralysed from the chest down after an accident while holidaying in Thailand. The previously active, outgoing Sam becomes withdrawn and depressed at the prospect of life in a wheelchair, but when one of her sons finds an injured magpie, which he names Penguin, the family begins a journey of healing alongside the plucky, cheeky bird. Sam’s professional photographer husband Cameron, documented the rehabilitation in pictures and soon Penguin’s Instagram feed went global, inspiring the 2016 book Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family.

Naomi Watts on the set of Penguin Bloom.

Watts was given the book by her friend, producer Emma Cooper and she was immediately “blown away” by the powerful images and the relationship between the bird and the Blooms — who hailed from Sydney’s northern beaches, not far from where Watts filmed Home And Away decades earlier — and immediately introduced it to her sons Sasha and Sammy.

“My family got to reading it and we were all incredibly moved,” she says. “This is a family that was broken because of this horrible accident that took place, and somehow the bird became the glue.”

Watts not only wanted to play Sam, she signed on alongside Cooper and another long-time friend Bruna Papandrea to produce, intending to be as hands-on as she could. Papandrea has also produced Big Little Lies and The Undoing, both starring another of Watts’ besties in Nicole Kidman, and the acclaimed actor longs for the day they can all work together on a project.

“Wouldn’t that be great?,” Watts says. “One thing for certain we experienced is that friends can work together very, very well and we all just rooted for each other and it was wonderful. We brought all of our old history into the room and we had a shorthand in terms of how we wanted to get things done and just had good times all along the way.”

Naomi Watts and Sam Bloom on the set of Penguin Bloom.

Watts immediately bonded with Sam Bloom once she had committed to playing her. Sam prepared videos so that Watts could correctly depict the physical challenges she faces every day and, even more importantly, shared her very private and personal journals so the actor would understand just how dark Sam’s headspace was after the accident.

“In terms of the emotional component of it, it was very much reading all of her words and speaking to her for hours on end,” Watts says. “But really it was those private stories that she didn’t really mean for anyone to read, those were some pretty powerful words and I would find myself sobbing reading them. It was quite a serious level of depression that she was going through.”

That Watts, 52, is still one of the most respected and in-demand actors in Hollywood is no surprise to anyone who has followed her stellar performances over the past decade in films such as Birdman, The Impossible, Vice and last year’s TV series The Loudest Voice. But it might be a pleasant surprise to Watts herself, who initially thought her window at the top would be a narrow one. Not only did she toil fruitlessly in Hollywood for years after her initial successes in Australia, but conventional wisdom at the time held that roles for women over 40 would be largely unrewarding and thin on the ground.

“Absolutely, I was indoctrinated with that way of thinking,” she says. “And I was late to the party by the way, even though I was trying to get hired all through my 20s, I didn’t really start getting properly hired until the end of my 20s and early 30s.

Naomi Watts says she’d love to make a movie with her mate Nicole Kidman. Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Michael Kors

“Everything changed after Mulholland Drive but I had that narrative in my head that it’s all going to be over at 40 and once you hit that mark, it’s done. So, I was thinking ‘Oh, my God — I finally got here and I only have a few short years left’. But here we are — it’s not the case and things have evolved.”

Despite her many successes in recent years, however, one role will long stand out as the one that got away. Watts was cast as a lead in a prequel spin-off to Game Of Thrones set 300 years earlier, and was devastated when HBO pulled the pin on it last year after filming a pilot.

“I’m sorry,” she says of the fan disappointment at the news. “I feel your pain. I equally got into it. I wasn’t a huge fan and hadn’t seen the shows until I was hired and then completely binged everything within the space of a couple of months and it’s just wonderful. It’s a deep shame, it would have been great fun. But I am not allowed to give anything away I’m afraid.”

Penguin Bloom opens on January 21

Originally published as Naomi Watts on Penguin Bloom, acting after 40 and her cancelled Game Of Thrones prequel