Interview with Naomi Watts, star of Fair Game

When the casting of Fair Game was announced, it seemed that, once again, a wodge of Hollywood Vaseline was about to be applied to the lens. Naomi Watts as housewife CIA superspy Valerie Plame? Sure. Just like Faye Dunaway 'was' Bonnie Parker and Charlize Theron 'was' Aileen 'Monster' Wuornos. But once the news sank in, the decision started to make sense. Not only do Plame and Watts have the same ballpark features, there is something equally chameleonic about both. Just as Plame segued effortlessly between assumed identities, Watts has also shown an immense range in her recent work, from her breakthrough performance as the duplicitous blonde of Mulholland Dr (2001) to the guileless Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005).

In Doug Liman's domestic espionage drama/political thriller, Watts gets right to the heart of the paradox that was/is Valerie Plame, a bright, sociable Washington housewife and mother who hides the nuts and bolts of her professional life from her closest friends and even her family. One moment she's in the Middle East, tapping up informants with a fake name and matching passport, the next she's having dinner with her Congressman husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) and their unsuspecting friends. Joe is the loudmouth; his politics are pretty much clear. Valerie, though, proves that it's always the quiet ones, relishing her anonymity until her cover is broken as part of a government-instigated counter-attack on her husband for daring to question the White House's decision to use questionable evidence of WMDs (Weapons Of Mass Destruction) as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Evidence of the 42-year-old actress's own fearlessness should be apparent from her intention to climb the Everest of modern movie roles later this year by playing Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik's adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' (largely fictional) book Blonde: A Novel. “It's a scary endeavour,” she admits. “We all feel we know Marilyn. But this is a different story. It's not about this sexual goddess, it's much more than that. But I haven't wrapped my head around it. Once I get closer to it, I'll start doing that. But right now I'm concentrating on Fair Game...”

How much time did you spend with Valerie Plame?
A lot. She was there right from the beginning of the filming process. We spoke a lot on the phone and tried to organise getting together. Sean managed to get to Santa Fe, which is where Valerie and Joe live now, and spend a few days with both of them. But I'd just had a baby, and it meant 12 hours of travel, door to door, so it was difficult. I do remember Valerie, on the phone one day, making a suggestion to meet in Chicago airport. And I was like, “Who meets people in an airport?” Well, spies! (Laughs) So that was a good introduction to her world.

What kind of research did you do?
Meeting her was the most important thing. Finally getting to be face to face with her. Although forget trying to get any discoveries about her spy world. That's classified information to this day. She's bound to her secrecy agreement. She was good in her profession then and she's good now!

Did she research you?
Ab-so-lutely. Oh yeah. And if she were sitting here today, she'd have done the same with you.

Were you ever wary of becoming too close to her?
That was absolutely key, otherwise you could fall into the trap of imitating her and lose track of the truth and the nuance of the performance. The only thing that was important for me to get 100 per cent accurate was the testimony [at the end of the movie], which we shrank right down. I only say the first few lines, then we cut to the real Valerie. But I really studied that hard, and I listened to it over and over again on my iPod. The rest of it was just piecing all the information together and going by what I'd learned about her as a woman, as a professional, as a wife and a mother.

Could you imagine doing what she did?
(Laughs) Come on! One morning she wakes up and she's in the Middle East. Two days later she's worrying about having enough milk in the fridge and having the babysitter worked out – then she she has to go back into her fake life and find the right passport. It's mindblowing how she juggled and balanced every part of her life. It took years of hardcore training to build this incredibly thick skin. And that's the thing that struck me as very unusual about her : her level of strength, and how she endured everything that she went through after the unveiling of her identity. She's got a strength I'd never seen in a woman. Or even a man!

What kind of training did you do? Did it reflect Valerie's training?
I had 48 hours of seeing what she went through in, what two or three years? I forget. You've caught me out! But she was number one of 20 students. And these are some of the things that I did. I can certainly comment on these: I was nailed into a box, a small box. My head was ducked under water. I was screamed at by several men trying to convince me to reveal information. I had to ram cars without a helmet or a seatbelt, because seatbelts and helmets are for wimps. (Laughs) I had to set off explosives. I had to shoot guns. And... I don't know if I'm even allowed to tell this story but basically I was put in a position where I had a concealed weapon – which is, as we know, a Federal offence. Now, we were working with official people. But I didn't know this! And I had to go to the convenience store and buy a coffee. It was a very heightened and pressured situation, because you can't get caught. So that kind of training, the purpose of it was to get me into... Well, to get me out of the mindset of someone who had just given birth and was in the most maternal place you could possibly be. I was feeding my baby every two to three hours. Even while I was doing this paramilitary training, there I was, feeding. With my loaded gun in my pocket.

Did you enjoy it?
It was both fun and scary. Doug dropped me off, and as he was about to leave, one of the guys kicked me in the shins and threw me to the floor. I went, “Owwwww!” And my trainer said, “Listen, if you have to say 'ow', that's fine. But let's not hear it unless you have to go to hospital. And let's not got to hospital unless we REALLY need to.” (Laughs.)

Do you think you have what it takes to make a spy?
I don't think so. I don't have quite as thick a skin as Valerie.

Do you identify at all with Valerie, about press attention and the way your privacy is invaded?
We talked about that. We talked about how we both have to take on these identities and hide our own in order to play a character. That was interesting to both of us. But we realised that the difference is, if I mess up, I just get a bad write-up. If she messes up, she can end up with a bullet in her head! (Laughs) But it was really hard for her; having lived such a private life, at such a level of secrecy, to be thrown into this public arena overnight. She didn't have the skills to handle it – she didn't know how. But she did learn them. Although it was hard for her to come to that agreement with her husband and say, “Yes, let's got to the press and speak out.” For Joe, that was a natural decision. He is a gregarious, extroverted, declarative person. But Valerie had to sort of undo all her training to find a way to unite with her husband and speak out.

Is it easy for you to go undercover, as it were?
In my real life, I go unrecognised all the time. I'm not joking. I rarely get recognised.

Was Valerie pleased with the way you portrayed her?
That's for her to say. But I think the Cannes premiere was an emotional moment for both her and Joe. They know what they went through, and despite the fact that I think she would prefer to have her career and things to be going the way they were, I think she feels she stood up for her convictions and said the truth out line. She put her family and herself through all kinds of scrutiny and challenges, and to be where she is now, sharing her story, is pretty amazing.

What was it like working with Sean Penn again?
This was the third time we'd worked together [after 21 Grams and The Assassination Of Richard Nixon], and in between those two other occasions we created a great friendship. So there's a history there, and when Doug told me that Sean was his first choice I sent him an email right away, saying, “I think you'll like this [script].” And sure enough, he responded. But, even on set, there's a shorthand there. Some of the scenes we did together took place in the house, and they were the most intense scenes in the movie. Valerie and Joe were dealing with such a major force – thank God they had the foundation they did to get through it. I mean, nobody expects that kind of thing to come into their lives, their homes. So had I been working with someone I'd never met before, it would have taken a few days to work out each other's rhythms, being careful with one another, which slows down the need to get that history – those familiar dynamics. We only had three weeks of shooting with Sean, so it was lucky that we had this history. We could synchronise from day one.

What do you think Fair Game is ultimately about?
To me, this is a film about truth and lies. I feel empowered as a woman to watch a woman go through what she went and handle it with grace and dignity. She's such a heroic woman. It took so much courage. Her marriage not only survived, she and Joe seem to be in such a good place right now. There are a lot of great lessons there, particularly for women.