'The Friend's Naomi Watts Is Carving Out a New Path in Hollywood

David Siegel, Naomi Watts, Bing the dog, and Scott McGehee at TIFF 2024 for The Friend.

The Big Picture While Naomi Watts may have been cast as the lead in The Friend, it is her canine companion, the scene-stealing Bing, that captures all our hearts with his soulful eyes. Watts' Iris is faced with the grief of losing a dear friend, Walter , who bequeaths his beloved Great Dane, Apollo , to her. As she struggles to find a way to live harmoniously with Apollo in her New York apartment, an unlikely yet powerful connection forms between them as they both tackle the loss of Walter.

It immediately brings me back to the bed and just that stare that I don't think I'll ever forget. I'm getting ahead of myself. Clearly, I know what your movie is when we're at a film festival. A lot of our audience will not know about The Friend just yet. I'll give this duty to one of you: would you mind giving a brief synopsis of your film?

SCOTT MCGEHEE: There's a lot of space in the book. If you're familiar with it, it's a very interior story. But Sigrid, who wrote the book, Sigrid Nunez, she didn't even give her characters names. It's far from a movie blueprint; we have a lot of work to do. Naomi Watts Hand-Delivered 'The Friend's Script to Bill Murray "He never wavered on the project." I was reading, and I'm also aware of this, that it's not super easy to get a script into Bill Murray's hands, and you, , stepped in and did that. I am curious what that's like from your perspective.

Naomi Watts is "Endlessly Fascinated" With Exploring Grief in Films Naomi, now I want to come back to you about you signing on yourself. When you first agreed to make this movie, what single part of it were you most looking forward to, but then I also want to know something about the experience that wound up being more creatively fulfilling than you ever could have imagined?

'The Friend's Bing Is "the Cary Grant of Dogs" SIEGEL: We searched for the dog that was gonna play Apollo with our trainer, Bill Berloni. When we met Bing and immediately fell in love with him, his owner and also trainer Bev Klingensmith, that became the absolutely invaluable aspect of being able to realize the movie. Bing loves Bev so much that we could move Bev around in order to attract Bing's attention. Bev would become Bing's eyeline.

WATTS: I don't know, maybe I'm getting softer. But it feels timely. There are some rough things going on in the world, and there's something about this that feels like the balm we need. It reminds you that friendships are important. Love is important. It's just where I'm at in my age. Softer. I've done a lot of dark.

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