Golden Globe Nominee Naomi Watts on Her Tsunami-Victim Role—and Abiding Fear of Water

Golden Globe Nominee Naomi Watts on Her Tsunami-Victim Role—and Abiding Fear of Water

For The Impossible, the movie about a family caught up in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Naomi Watts spent six weeks in a water tank in Spain. During that difficult period, she did occasionally wonder what the heck she had gotten herself into by taking the role, based on a true story.

“But every time I got to the point where I was about to complain and say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t handle this. Please, no more,’ I remembered, you know, I’m just an actor. I know I’m safe,” Watts said at a screening hosted by Calvin Klein Collection on Wednesday.

“These people had no idea what was going on. And they didn’t know if it was finishing, they didn’t know if they were safe, and they were not able to see their other family members,” she added. “You know, it was wild. So you just go, ‘No, this is nothing compared to what they went through, so buckle up and soldier on and get through it.’”

Though her astonishing acting in The Impossible snagged her a SAG and a Golden Globe nomination, Watts told VF Daily that she initially had reservations about doing a movie about the tsunami. “I thought, Wow, it’s something that affected so many lives, and took so many lives. The idea of doing a disaster movie—that would be so wrong if they made it spectacular in any way. So I was nervous, and it wasn’t a straightaway ‘Oh, this is a great idea.’ But once I read four or five pages of the script, I knew I had to do it. Because it felt completely rooted in truth, and it was.”

Maria Belon, the woman whom Watts plays, attended the screening at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.

Another tsunami victim, Petra Nemcova, said that she was at the same hotel in Thailand where they shot the film. “I didn’t know going into the movie, actually, but yeah, the same hotel, the same beach,” Nemcova told VF Daily. “And that made it even harder to watch everything.” The movie is, indeed, hard to watch in places, but Nemcova is impressed with the results. “They’ve done, really, an amazing job, the re-creation of the hotel, the wave, being under the water—everything is as it was. And very, very real,” she said.

Co-star Ewan McGregor and guests including Terry George, Liev Schreiber, Constance Jablonski, Neal Bledsoe, and Calvin Klein’s Italo Zucchelli all got a chance to decompress afterward at a party at Bill’s Food and Drink.

“I can’t even put myself in those shoes, in the experience of this film. It seems so haunting, so crazy,” Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa said at the party. He perked up when he spotted McGregor across the room. “I remember seeing him in Moulin Rouge. He was such a delightful character in the movie, so I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Costa said.

Even before doing The Impossible, Watts had a fear of water. And now, will she ever go near a coastline again? “I love the beach, but I prefer glass water,” she said, laughing. “I’m scared of waves and strong currents.”

- Vanity Fair