Naomi Watts has taken on plenty of unnerving characters, but her latest role required something different. Playing a woman who hides a truly monstrous past behind a spotless suburban life pushed her into territory she admits she spent years avoiding entirely.
Naomi Watts Explains How She Approached Her Darkest Role in Years
The Housewife is a psychological thriller set in 1964, inspired by true events, and follows a young New York Times journalist investigating reports of a Nazi hiding in Queens. Watts plays the wife of Russell Ryan, an ordinary-seeming woman whose past turns out to be anything but.
Speaking with Deadline, Watts and her collaborators broke down just how close the film stays to the real story and what it took to bring her character’s darkness to the screen.
“The court appearances, the extradition, even parts of the investigation, those are all rooted in fact,” Watts said.
But the emotional core is the contradiction at the center of her character.
“She is she was this beloved churchgoer polite lady,” she added. “But she was also one of the most murderous concentration camp guards who has ever lived.”
Watts revealed she had actually held onto this script for roughly a decade before finally committing, admitting fear kept getting in the way.
“I think I’ve had this under like I read it probably 10 years ago and we just kept getting close and then for whatever reason it wasn’t the right time and I think I was guilty of procrastinating because of my fear,” Watts noted.
She eventually came around to calling the part her “villain era,” describing it as the most extreme character she has ever approached, one built entirely on the tension between a meticulously maintained domestic life and the violence she works to keep buried. That performance, Watts told Deadline, meant living inside a mindset that never breaks.
“She’s unrepentant until the end. And that is horrific to play as an actor to live with that mindset.”
The Housewife has already drawn early praise on the festival circuit ahead of its wider rollout.
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