Watts in a name?

Watts in a name?
by Stan Urankar, Sun News, Nov 18, 2010

The “Plamegate” affair that serves as basis for the revealing “Fair Game” screen retelling is dramatic stuff on its own. In this case, it’s perhaps more critical that the proper actress is cast as Valerie Plame, the CIA operations officer whose cover was blown in the Washington Post following an alleged White House leak.

The assignment, should she care to accept it — and she did — fell to Naomi Watts, and director Doug Liman couldn’t be happier. “The story screams for the ‘do-something’ type of third act you’d expect,” Liman says, “but that isn’t Valerie.

“That’s why I was so passionate about Naomi playing her character. Valerie would retreat behind the walls to regroup, and Naomi is the only one who could pull that off, keeping you on this incredibly horrible journey even as you’re screaming at the screen for her to fight back.”

Watts, too, admits an immediate connection with Plame’s story, even though she read the script by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth only weeks after giving birth to her second child, Samuel, now almost 2. (She and actor Liev Schreiber also have an older son, Alexander, 3.) After convincing friend Sean Penn to join her as Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, Watts now politely agrees that answering questions about her latest film is fair game, indeed.

Is there a challenge to playing a living person?

It definitely ups the ante. Factor in that so many in America are familiar with this story and you can’t help but feel an extra amount of pressure. Mind you, Valerie was not only alive but very involved in the production — acting as one of our CIA consultants, frequently saying this is how that would work, you wouldn’t have those signs there, you wouldn’t address someone like that — she was very hands-on.

Valerie is truly impressive to me, so I naturally was nervous. I felt it was a big undertaking because it was important to be authentic to the level of betrayal to which she’d been exposed.

Did you quickly buy into the project?

Very quickly. I had the baby on Dec. 13 (2008), I read the script on Dec. 28 and we began filming in late February. There was so little time to absorb so many facts that’d been told through the media in a fragmented way, but it was more important for me to let go of those facts and concentrate on Valerie and really learning her story: how did she deal with this betrayal, how did her marriage and family function, how did her lifestyle change, who did she become. It would be so easy for any of us to avoid the fight altogether or to come undone, and she did neither.

Then, did you develop a rapport with Valerie?

You learn that she’s not someone who wears her heart on her sleeve. She is not an emotionally driven person. What she is is a brilliant covert agent. To this day, she’s very controlled and reserved and quiet and warm, but you don’t get her all at once.

Valerie is not easy to read. It was difficult for me at times to have a feel for that. After all, I would’ve handled her situation very differently, but that’s not who she is. Nothing breaks her. Valerie absorbs things slowly, learns how to deal with them and then formulates a plan.

What was meeting her like?

It took a while because I’d had the baby and Santa Fe (where Plame and her family now reside) to New York City is about 12 hours, so it just didn’t happen. What was funny was her saying, “OK, how about we meet halfway, say at O’Hare (Airport, in Chicago)?” I thought to myself, “Goodness, who meets an airport? . . . Oh, of course. A spy does.”

Valerie eventually came to New York and we had dinner, but it still took time. She is very careful, very deliberate with what she reveals. We talked a great deal until it finally came to crunch time, when I presented her with a list of very personal and confronting questions. I wanted to get into her mindset, especially in exploring how she was almost unbelievably consistent and strong. I wanted to learn more about that person.

Valerie, like you, is a working mother.

I have the utmost respect for her because of that. How she managed to raise twins (now 10 years old) despite traveling all over the world, working such outrageous hours week in and week out, is absolutely incredible. It’s amazing that she could be such a professional and a mother — and be really good at it.

I never got to see Valerie with her kids, but when she came to my hotel in Cannes, it was obvious she was a natural mother. She immediately related to my kids, who frankly don’t tend to pay attention to people — unless, of course, they’re holding some great new toy.