According to Naomi Watts, late auteur David Lynch was far from finished making films prior to his unexpected passing in January 2025.
Watts told the Los Angeles Times that she and fellow Lynch staple Laura Dern were ready to collaborate again with the director in late November 2024. “We had a beautiful lunch at his house,” Watts said of herself, Lynch, and Dern. “I knew he’d been unwell but he was in great spirits. He wanted to go back to work — Laura and I were like, ‘You can do it! You could work from the trailer.’ He was not, in any way, done. I could see the creative spirit alive in him.”
She added, “I thought I would see him in a couple of weeks [after that last lunch] because I was here in L.A. There’s a lot I could share but I want to be private about it because of his family. But it was a really powerful meeting that filled me with just so much love and hope.”
Lynch died at age 78 on January 17. Watts added that it was “so deeply, deeply upsetting” to learn of his death. Lynch revitalized Watts’ U.S. career with “Mulholland Drive,” as she recalled.
“I had a really lucky and strong start after the David Lynch launch — that was a good five, six years where one great thing led to another,” Watts said. “It hasn’t been a clear upward trajectory, it’s been successes and failures. But they’ve all been experiences that have led to something.”
Watts continued to work with Lynch across his expansive career: She had a voice cameo in 2006’s “Inland Empire” (which was Lynch’s final feature) and also appeared in “Twin Peaks: The Return” alongside Dern.
Watts shared a moment from her last meeting with Lynch: “I took an accidental picture,” she said. “We took a picture of all of us [with Dern], but then my camera remained open and I bumped it — it was a picture of the perfect architecture of his house and two palm trees. It just screamed L.A. and David Lynch. I sent the picture of the three of us, and then that random picture that said so much. It was a perfect blue sky. His house — he really loved that space. Blue skies, hope, magic, just dreamy. I sent him a text and he wrote back the most incredible David response.”
Upon his passing, Watts wrote on Instagram, “My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave… The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?!”
Source link
