[Article] Naomi Watts lightens up in ‘While We’re Young’

By Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News

If someone told Naomi Watts to lighten up, she apparently said OK. But she did it on her own terms.

The actress who has nailed multiple shades of extreme trauma in the likes of “Mulholland Drive,” “The Ring,” “21 Grams,” “The Impossible” and many more has been going for laughs lately. Last fall, we saw her as a pregnant Russian stripper in “St. Vincent” and an actress fighting with her boyfriend/co-star through rehearsals for a stage production in “Birdman.” Now she and Ben Stiller are a 40-something couple fumbling to prove they’re not old in “While We’re Young.”

As those brief descriptions indicate, however, undercurrents of sadness ripple through all of those comic roles. For Watts, unsurprisingly, that made them even more fun.

“It was my first year of breaking through to this comedic territory because I’ve been fixed so long in the world of high drama,” says Watts, 46, in her lilting English accent. “ ‘While We’re Young,’ ‘Birdman’ and ‘St. Vincent’ all in one year; hopefully, it’s opened a door and the door will stay open just a bit.”.......


Watts admits that working with some of the industry’s greatest comedians, like Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy in “St. Vincent” as well as Stiller in her current project, has been a great learning experience.

“Ben is extraordinary. It’s so hard not to laugh when you’re in a scene with someone like that and it’s a really long scene. His eyes are so deep and he’s so serious and there’s, like, so much pain right there — it’s so funny! That’s terrible, isn’t it?” she catches herself while chuckling.

“While We’re Young” is all about painful and hilarious new discoveries. Stiller and Watts play Josh and Cornelia Srebnick, a contented if not entirely fulfilled New York couple who have tried and failed to have children, decided they’re happy without any and must convince themselves of that again when their best friends have a baby.

Josh is a respected documentary filmmaker who’s been stuck on an unfinished project for a ludicrous amount of time. Cornelia is the daughter of a more highly respected documentarian (Charles Grodin) who’s never been much of a Josh fan.

Then the Srebnicks meet Jamie (Adam Driver), an aspiring filmmaker in his 20s who idolizes Josh, and Jamie’s girlfriend Darby (Amanda Seyfried). The couples soon become close friends; Cornelia finds herself going to hip-hop exercise classes with Darby, while Jamie draws Josh into helping him on a dubious documentary project, among other potentially embarrassing, generation-blurring activities.

“It’s confronting and awkward to think of yourself as a midlifer,” Watts says of her attraction to the project by writer-director Noah Baumbach (“Frances Ha,” the Stiller-starring “Greenberg”). “The writing was so good; I loved the parallel lives and mutual infatuation each couple had.

“The overall thing is that everyone thinks it’s better somewhere else,” she continues. “The younger people, they think that they can’t do it on their own, so they’ve got to get the help of the older, ‘wiser’ couple. And we think that we’re not exciting anymore, that we’re dead inside and we must be great if the young people think we’re great.”

The film raises questions about whether or not the Srebnicks’ childlessness makes them more or less mature than their peers. Watts had her first child in 2007 with her partner of 10 years, “Ray Donovan” star Liev Schreiber, and their second boy a year later.

“I had my children late,” she acknowledges. “It’s made me more mature in some ways, but in some ways the opposite. They forced us to feel not middle-aged. We have to roll around on the floor and kick the balls and jump on the trampoline, and sometimes the back’s gonna go out to remind you that you are exactly as every other middle-aged person is. But there are lots of times you don’t feel like that because your kids keep you young.

“Obviously, though, parenthood also makes you more mature. You have to be responsible and always thinking of the others before yourself. There’s planning and negotiating between the two of us about who’s going to be around. And living by example is the best way to teach your kids, I think. You have to be careful what you say and how you behave in front of them.”

Watts also can be seen in theaters now as a less-than-shining example of motherhood as the ruthless rebel leader Evelyn Johnson-Eaton in “The Divergent Series: Insurgent.” The young-adult science fiction franchise, for which she’ll also appear in the upcoming “Allegiant” chapters, is a rare type of commitment for the actress. Outside of “The Ring” horror franchise and the 2005 “King Kong” remake, Watts has shown little interest in mass-market commercial filmmaking.

“It’s not a world I know that well,” she admits, but was nonetheless impressed by the first entry in the dystopian fantasy. “I thought it was a really slick and entertaining film. And it’s good to do some of these things, so that I can keep going with these weirdo choices as well.”

There is no shortage of eccentric dramas on Watts’ schedule, including “The Sea of Trees,” Gus Van Sant’s study of suicidal tendencies with Matthew McConaughey, and Jean-Marc Vallee’s “Demolition,” in which her character helps Jake Gyllenhaal’s grieving investment banker rearrange his life.

Sounds like more typical Watts stuff, but as her forays into comedy and teen sci-fi show, she is at a stage in her career when anything seems possible.

“The longer the life, the more experiences you go through — good and bad,” she reckons. “Obviously, the roles are going to reflect that. I’m not going to be the arm candy anymore, which so what? It’s not such a great loss. I mean, I would have liked a little more time in that area, possibly, because I came into it quite late. It would have been fun to have a few more diverse roles in my late 20s. But this is how it’s gone and, knock on wood, I’ve not been unlucky. Let’s hope it keeps going.”