Netflix’s new thriller The Watcher follows a couple whose dream home turns into a nightmare when they become the target of a mysterious stalker. Here, its lead star Naomi Watts chats to Stylist’s entertainment editor Christobel Hastings about her love of true crime, the joy of working with Jennifer Coolidge and why viewers will be hooked by her new series.
In the realm of true crime, there are fear-based fantasies for every persuasion right now. In the past month alone, we’ve seen the harrowing true story of the Broberg family and the multiple kidnappings of their young daughter come to life in Peacock’s A Friend Of The Family, watched Paramount+ dramatise the story of a young woman who spent seven years imprisoned beneath a bed in Girl In The Box and shuddered through Netflix’s controversial new series Monster detailing the life and crimes of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
There may not be copious amounts of blood and gore in Ryan Murphy’s latest Netflix thriller The Watcher, but its premise is just as disturbing as its counterparts. The series tells the story of a married couple (played by Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale) who move into their dream home in an idyllic, wealthy New Jersey neighbourhood. Soon after, they realise they’ve bought more than they bargained for when they receive an onslaught of threatening handwritten notes from a stalker calling themselves ‘The Watcher’.
Front and centre of this unsettling series is Naomi Watts, who is continuing her long-running streak of scaring audiences nearly 20 years after finding breakout stardom in 2002 classic The Ring. Hot on the heels of her intense performance in Amazon Prime’s remake of the 2014 horror film Goodnight Mommy, Watts is back on the small screen as family matriarch Nora Brannock, one half of a happy couple terrorised by the mystery stalker in The Watcher.
“I pretty much said yes, right away, without having read any scripts,” Watts tells me when we speak over Zoom. Having been tuned into Ryan Murphy’s work for a long time, accepting the project was a no-brainer. “Ryan calling was a big deal,” she says, explaining that while she wasn’t initially familiar with the “juicy” article that inspired the series, she was quick to do her homework. First published in The Cut in 2018, The Haunting Of A Dream House follows real-life spouses Maria and Derek Broaddus who in 2014 moved into their dream home in the New Jersey suburb of Westfield, only to be stalked to a sinister degree by an anonymous ‘watcher’. After reading it, she “got very caught up in it”, and got on the phone with Murphy to seal the deal.
Read the full interview here.
CHRISTOBEL HASTINGS 