Despite being separated by about 600 years and an ocean, Naomi Watts' next two roles have a lot in common.
The British/Australian actor plays Hamlet's mother, Danish Queen Gertrude, in "Ophelia," which opens June 28 at St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis and on streaming services. And, coming to Showtimestarting Sunday, she's Anoka native Gretchen Carlson in "The Loudest Voice," a seven-part miniseries about Roger Ailes (Russell Crowe), whose throne atop the Fox News Channel was ripped out from under him when Carlson and other women came forward to detail his years as a serial sexual harasser (a movie version, with Watts' buddy Nicole Kidman as Carlson, also is due this year).
"I shot these two pieces almost two years apart ['Ophelia' was first], so I didn't really draw comparisons then, but, as I'm promoting both, I can see: They're both ambitious, strong women. They have a strong sense of themselves. They're involved in a corrupt power dynamic," Watts said. "None of that surprises me because there's this fascination now with the misuse of power, and women have been exposed to that for a long time."
You could argue that Watts' breakthrough performance, as an actor who transforms herself in a front of our eyes during an audition scene in 2001's "Mulholland Drive," also showed how Hollywood chews up and spits out women.
But Watts suspects that a few years down the road, we'll marvel at the progress women have made, inside and outside the entertainment industry — and that will have had a lot to do with Carlson, a former Miss America who became a star at Fox only to see her career derailed when she refused Ailes' advances.
"She was not going to be pushed away, disposed of. She stood up to him," said Watts, 50, a two-time Oscar nominee for "21 Grams" and "The Impossible." "Even in the span of my career, I've witnessed a massive change. We were told, 'You'll be washed up by 40,' and now, here I am a decade after 40, with both of these projects. 'Ophelia,' especially, is a female-driven movie that is directed by a woman and adapted by a woman from a book that was written by a woman."
Carlson's settlement with Fox included $20 million, an apology and a nondisclosure agreement, so Watts could not meet with the TV host. But video and a dialect coach, who helped with Carlson's Minnesota accent and her accentless anchorwoman accent, prepared Watts to tackle the violinist/Virginia Woolf scholar who was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2017.
"I have a hard time with all accents. The thing about Gretchen is that, like all newsreaders or anchorwomen, they get rid of their accents, so you only hear it in a word or two," said Watts. "With her, you hear it in 'Minnesota.' It's like when I say 'Australia' [which Watts says quickly, like 'Austrlya']. You don't say 'Aus-tra-li-a.' You say it like you live there, even if you've changed how you say all your other words. So I worked on — it seems like the most prominent vowel shape in Minnesota is the long 'o' sound."
