Emily Watson

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is Emily Watson, one of the most respected character actors of her generation. She began her career on stage joining the RSC in 1992. Her breakthrough film roles in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves and as Jacqueline Dupre in Hilary and Jackie followed a few years later. She was nominated for Academy Awards for both. She learned how to play the cello for Hilary and Jackie, an early indication of the commitment that has helped her maintain a 30-year run of critically acclaimed performances. Angela's Ashes, Ghostford Park, Punch Drunk Love, The Book Thief, Small Things Like These, Appropriate Adult, Chernobyl, Hamlet, The Billion Dollar TV franchise Dune. If there is a common thread in her work, it might be exploring ideology, hierarchies, and power. Her own story starts in London, where during her strict upbringing, she found refuge in books. She refers to herself as a storyteller to this day. She says, I love the sense of creating and inhabiting something. That feeling of making it feel magically real. That's the addiction. Emily Watson, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Very nice to be here. Well, how wonderful to have you. And a job that's an addiction. I mean, that's quite a lucky thing to have, isn't it? So lucky. And that feeling of making it feel real, is that making it feel real to you or to an audience or both? Particularly with film, you can never predict how an audience is going to respond to something, and that's something utterly beyond your control. But.

Emily Watson1:52

Uh

Speaker 41:52

Yeah.

Emily Watson1:52

Six.

Emily Watson1:55

Yeah.

Emily Watson1:58

So we're quite a lucky thing to have, isn't it?

Presenter2:14

I always think that being an actor, you have to be a bit of an idiot, and you have to.

Presenter2:19

Retain that sense of childlike wonder where make-believe is real and it's still there somehow. So that it feels real to you. In the moment.

Presenter2:30

It feels real. Yeah, I love that. And is music ever part of that process?

Presenter2:35

My relationship to music, I find it really interesting and kind of a bit screwed up and

Presenter2:41

I remember when I first got to the RSC being handed a mixtape by Ian Dury. What? Yes. I was doing a show at the RSC called A Jovial Crew, and he had been invited in to do write songs for it.

Emily Watson2:50

How are you guys doing?

Presenter2:58

And he turned up in the rehearsal room and gave everybody a mixtape to listen to. And I was so recently, I guess, not yet emerged from my upbringing, which was very reclusive and strict and

Emily Watson3:10

And so

Presenter3:12

We weren't allowed to engage with popular culture, popular music, all sorts of things. Obviously, of course, I did, but there was a part of me that had grown up in this way and was just always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Emily Watson3:15

Pop.

Presenter3:24

And he gave me this mixtape, and I just remember being utterly baffled by the idea of

Presenter3:30

That this was a sort of pleasurable leisure activity that would contribute to the creative work that we were doing.

Presenter3:37

And then slowly kind of listening to it. And you know, and then over the years directors have done that. Like Paul Thomas Anderson had this fabulous collection of music. Maybe music nerd, isn't it? Yeah. For Punch Drunk Love. And I think I've over the years become I've

Emily Watson3:42

Isn't that

Emily Watson3:46

Major music nerd, isn't it?

Presenter3:53

You know, through the people I've met, through my husband who listens to a lot of music, through my kids.

Presenter3:59

I've come to a realization of how important it is.

Emily Watson4:01

Yeah.

Presenter4:02

In my imagination. But I think, you know, that's been quite a journey. Yes, to take it from it being a kind of illicit activity at the beginning and right the way through to being free to kind of enjoy it. To be fair, though, if you're going to get your first mixtape from anyone, Ian Jewry is got to be top of the list, Emily. Yeah, no, he was. That's pretty cool. Well, of course, you're sharing your discs with us today, so I think we should get started with your first. Okay, my first disc is My Curly-Headed Baby, sung by Paul Robeson.

Emily Watson4:16

In June.

Emily Watson4:18

Malaya.

Presenter4:31

And this is a song my granny sang to me when I was a baby. I kind of wondered why am I drawn to this song to talk about it now.

Presenter4:41

And I think that when I was very small I had such a strong feeling of being utterly loved.

Presenter4:49

And

Presenter4:51

The lyric that stays with me from this song is Do you want the stars to play with? Do you want the moon to run away with? And that idea of being a dreamer and being free and having your imagination

Presenter5:03

set on fire by the imaginative world, by the dream world, is very, very powerful. Then sort of later in my upbringing, I was very strongly given the impression that dreaming was bad and it was was a an activity that would be lead to my

Presenter5:21

Destruction and that dreaming wasn't allowed. But I think I had this very, very early connection to dreaming and how powerful it was. And I've always had wild dreams all my life.

Speaker 25:32

So lula lula lula lula by by Do you want the moon to play with, Or the stars to run away with?

Speaker 25:45

They'll come if you don't cry So lula lula lula lula bye bye In your mother's arms be creeping And soon you

Presenter6:02

My Curly-Headed Baby, sung by Paul Robeson with the Rita Williams Singers and the Jeff Love Orchestra, bringing back memories of your maternal grandma Emily Watson. So let's go back to the beginning then. You were born in London in 1967 to Richard and Catherine, following your big sister Harriet. What are your memories of early family life?

Presenter6:22

Joy, fun, you know, being a very strong unit, a very strong team. As a small child, I think I was very joyful. Joyful, and you also said a dreamer, so creative, imaginative, all the things that we would expect a little girl who would grow up to become an actress to be. Yes, absolutely. Tell me about your parents. Your father, Richard, he was an architect. My dad was an architect, and my mum was an English teacher.

Presenter6:47

They were very smart, cultured, loving parents, but also then became part of the School of Economic Science, which was a religious organisation that became a very, very big part of our lives. So when I was around aged five, that then became a really strong focus of our lives. I want to talk about that more, but set the scene for us a little bit. Tell us about your dad. So he was an architect. He was an architect. Where did he practice? As a young man, I think he was an artist and he was a brilliant mathematician and a poet.

Presenter7:24

And then everyone said to him, Oh, you're good at maths, you're good at art, go be an architect, and he went off to study architecture. He and my mum got married while he was still a student. They had my sister really young on a train.

Emily Watson7:32

I have my sister read.

Presenter7:34

Yeah, we met on a train. Most of his work he was doing design for assisted living, converting places and designing apartments for people with disabilities, wheelchairs, that kind of thing. He worked for local councils. He did a lot of that kind of stuff. A lot of like municipal architecture. And your mum was an English teacher. She was an English teacher, yeah. She was a very good English teacher, actually. I have occasionally people come up to me.

Emily Watson7:45

Is well

Emily Watson7:51

Yeah, yeah, architecture.

Emily Watson7:54

She was

Presenter8:00

On the tube and say, Excuse me, and I think they want to say, Oh, I saw you in la la la. And they say, Your mum was my English teacher, and I still remember her, and she was amazing. So she was one of those special teachers that lit people up. Did she do that for you with the subject? With Shakespeare, you're like, Yeah, no, I mean, we had, because of the way we were brought up, we weren't supposed to engage with popular culture so much. We didn't have a television.

Emily Watson8:08

So

Emily Watson8:10

Leave people up.

Emily Watson8:12

Do that for you?

Emily Watson8:14

But she shared

Emily Watson8:15

Yeah, no one's gonna be.

Presenter8:24

But I read a lot of books and my mum really fed that. She didn't, you know, they didn't sort of buy into the sort of strictest version of what our lives were supposed to be.

Emily Watson8:29

She

Presenter8:35

She used to go to the secondhand bookshop at the end of the road and come home at the end of the week with a pi just a big pile of books and I would devour them. I read War and Peace when I was eleven.

Presenter8:45

I know, rather I think I had a race with a friend at school'cause, you know, we did we had we had to entertain ourselves in those days.

Emily Watson8:49

We had

Presenter8:52

My mum was very much a wordsmith, loved Shakespeare, and introduced me to Shakespeare at a young age. We went to see. The RSC when I was seven, I think, I saw a production of

Presenter9:04

As you like it and muched about nothing. I remember sort of practically stopping the show because I was laughing so much. I just loved it. Emily, I think we're better take a minute for some music. This is your second choice today. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it with you to your island today? This is part of the soundtrack to Monancq by Jacques Tati.

Presenter9:24

And one of the things that my parents did, which was amazing, was they took us to the cinema. So this we saw very young. When I was four, maybe, we drove to the south of France in a Renault four. But before we went,

Presenter9:38

They took us to see Monsieur Ullo's Holiday, the Jacques Taty movie. And I think they must have taken us more than once. And then we had

Presenter9:47

The record we had the L P of it, they like, and we had a very, very thin record collection, which was mostly Mozart, but it had this monancle in it.

Presenter9:57

And it's a film and music that's about

Presenter10:00

Everything you see is absurd and delightful and hilarious. I'd sort of got so into this that by the time we arrived in Calais and drove off the boat, I thought everything I saw was hilarious. I thought every French person I saw was

Presenter10:16

A clown designed to make me laugh. I'd sort of so absorbed it anyway. So it's a piece of music my sister and I listened to over and over and we loved. We didn't have access to very much music, but this was very special.

Presenter11:01

Part of the film soundtrack to Molanclef, performed by Georges Durban and his orchestra. Emily, your family were members of an organization called the School of Economic Science. How would you describe it exactly? It's a religious organization. It has a belief system that is very devotional and full, and people give their lives to it. And I think at the center of it is a philosophy that is.

Presenter11:27

a beautiful thing. It's sort of spiritual communism that everybody is the same. But in practice it well, for us as children, it wasn't like that. It was very restrictive and just very, very strict, but also very repressive to women and young girls and

Emily Watson11:37

Aim was

Presenter11:47

destructive in in some ways. So very mixed.

Emily Watson11:49

Yeah, so

Presenter11:51

Okay, so I mean, it's been described as controversial. Some people have likened it to a cult. And and as you say, among the very strict expectations that you grew up with were these ideas around gender roles. So what did that mean for you as a little girl? Well, my sort of instinct to be, you know, a sort of dreamer and allowing your imagination to take you

Presenter12:10

elsewhere and all over the place was my salvation in that, because it sort of kept that part of me alive. And my parents really fed that. They didn't enforce a lot of the strictness. But I think there was very much an expectation for women that you would become a wife and a mother.

Emily Watson12:21

Yeah.

Presenter12:27

Maybe a teacher, but that the idea of having a career and being ambitious and all of those things was.

Emily Watson12:32

Are they

Presenter12:33

I'm sure things have changed now, but it was very much the idea of being independent was very frowned on. And some former pupils at SES schools have talked about violence and intimidation. And there was an independent inquiry that found some pupils had been subjected to criminal levels of violence. The school apologised. How did you navigate your own school days? And did you see any of that? I did see some of it. And I think I navigated it by keeping my head down and being a good girl for as long as I could stomach that. Certainly while I was at school.

Emily Watson13:07

Sutney

Presenter13:09

As I got older, then I just sort of questioned it more and more and more and got when the logic of life is staring you in the face, you go, Well, hang on a minute, that doesn't make sense and that doesn't make sense. Tell me more about that. When did that start to happen for you? Well, really, as a teenager, I mean, I I sort of had the urge not to be there and to to leave. And I went off to university and I I for a while I was sort of felt like I was leading a double life because I was doing you know, leading a normal life and going out and doing everything that young people do. But at the same time I was returning every week to these sessions and

Presenter13:41

To the point where it didn't make sense anymore. And then we had a kind of a falling out over me doing Breaking the Waves, which

Emily Watson13:44

Hmm.

Presenter13:51

That was the break between that was the sort of beginning of the end. I mean, it still took me a while to extricate myself, I think.

Emily Watson13:52

Yeah, that was

Presenter13:57

When you've grown up in that situation, the fear of leaving something is wired in. If you've been born to it, absolutely, and your network is there. And also, you've internalized a lot. You absolutely have. What was that like for you, kind of working that out? I was thinking about this on the car on the way here, that in relation to music, when I was five years old.

Emily Watson14:07

If you turn on

Presenter14:18

I was asked to write a piece of music, to set a piece of scripture to music.

Presenter14:25

And I chose a sentence, I think it's in either Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads, which says.

Presenter14:32

They who deny the self return to a godless birth, blind, enveloped in darkness.

Presenter14:39

And that was kind of the this sort of sentence that was hanging over you, that if you didn't embrace the teaching and the way of life, that there was this terrible fear that you would all religions have it. It's the way to control people, I guess. And I was a very, very devotional and loving child, as many, many children are, and I sort of

Emily Watson14:49

The

Presenter15:02

embraced it all and believed in it all. And so the journey from there to

Presenter15:06

finding myself, ironically, which is what the whole thing was supposed to be about, was finding yourself. But just being myself, being my authentic natural self was a long journey. And you know, obviously, we're all still on that journey.

Presenter15:20

I wonder about your parents as well. I mean, you know, it sounds like life at home was less strict than life at school, certainly. How do you now as an adult look back at their choice to be part of the SES and their the appeal, you know, the central tenets of the organization for them?

Speaker 415:34

That's the organisation for them.

Presenter15:36

It will always be confusing that because they obviously loved us so much, but they did, I think, unwittingly put us potentially in harm's way. We were okay because we had them, but other people maybe were not. And looking back at yourself as that little girl who was, you know, it sounds eager to please, eager to do well, but also had this spirit of a dreamer inside yourself. How did you nurture that? How did that stay alive through those years? Reading, really reading.

Presenter16:09

My parents always took us to cinema and we went to see amazing films.

Presenter16:14

I don't know, it just kind of chose me in a way. I kind of thought, Oh, well, I'll try and be an actor and and then I got a job at the RSC and that was like a you know, I was you know, that's a T V series that I discovered when my children were little, Mr Ben.

Emily Watson16:21

Uh

Speaker 216:21

And that was

Emily Watson16:21

Uh

Presenter16:28

Oh, yeah. It's a magic changing room. You go into the changing room, there's a costume, and there you're suddenly off in this world. I often think that on set, it's like that. It's like, and then as if by magic.

Speaker 216:29

It's a magic change if you're not.

Speaker 216:31

There's a

Speaker 216:34

I don't think

Speaker 216:36

It's like

Speaker 416:37

Uh

Presenter16:39

The shopkeeper appeared. It's time for some more music, I think. Emily Watson, disc number three. Please, what have you got for us?

Presenter16:45

This is part of the Adagio from Mozart's serenade in B-flat for 13 wound instruments. This, interestingly, part of the culture at this SES was that music that we were allowed to listen to was Mozart. Mozart was conscious music. You know, we did listen to other things, but that was sort of the, you know, the kind of the guidance.

Presenter17:08

And so we had, in our very thin record collection, we had this, and my father loved it.

Presenter17:15

Long before it became a brilliantly used piece in the film Amadeus, which that film I absolutely love, it also I connect to it because

Presenter17:27

During lockdown early in the pandemic,

Presenter17:30

the bit where we none of us really knew where we were heading.

Presenter17:34

And it was kind of terrifying.

Presenter17:37

And anyway, I'm very lucky to live quite close to Greenwich Park, and so that was our daily walk. And Greenwich Park is also quite close to Trinity College of Music.

Presenter17:47

And one day we were walking in the park and it was that insanely beautiful, bright, hot spring weather with green everywhere. We came around the corner and there's there's lots of sort of nooks and crannies and hills and dells in Greenwich Park into this little sort of dell. And there socially distanced with kind of bicycles and hoodies all over the place with music stands were these kids from Trinity College Music playing this piece. And it was

Presenter18:16

breathtaking in its beauty and

Presenter18:20

and a moment where

Presenter18:22

Of realization of this is what we stand to lose. This is the peak of who we are. We have evolved to the point that we can do this. Our young people are here by choice in this park, making this incredibly beautiful sound. And, you know, you drive through London, and the lifeblood of the city was closed. You know, the theatres were closed, music, everything was gone. It felt like this, I would fight for this. You know, this is something that I...

Presenter18:50

believe is really, really, truly good. And so this piece of music, you know, it was incredibly moving and people didn't know whether to stop and listen because was that a gathering? You know, and you could people see people standing around with tears in their eyes. And I feel very grateful to those students for that moment. I don't know who they are or where they are now. And hopefully they're all having an amazing career, but it was a very powerful moment.

Presenter20:15

Part of the adagio from Mozart Serenade in B flat K three six one performed by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields wind ensemble, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

Presenter20:26

Emily Watson, at 18 then you went to the University of Bristol to study English. What was it like to be free to live life on your own terms? It must have been quite overwhelming. It was very overwhelming. I think I was deeply unprepared for it, but I kind of gravitated to the theatre and I did a lot of student plays. I began to have a sense of this is how I define myself. These are the people that I want to hang out with. Yeah, you had some interesting peers around you, didn't you? Talking to the people. I mean, David Nichols, the writer, screenwriter who wanted to be an actor in those days. He was at Bristol the same time as you. You had the now director of The Old Vic, Matthew Watson. Yeah. Mark Ravenhill. Prayer, Mark Ravenhill, yeah. Did you kind of work together? Were you in the middle of the day? Yeah, we did. We did. Matthew and I played Benedict and Beatrice in Much to About Nothing, and David Nichols was Dogborough.

Emily Watson20:52

Damn.

Emily Watson20:55

The right

Emily Watson20:58

To use it, yeah.

Emily Watson21:03

Who watches, Mark Ravenhill, playwrights, yeah.

Emily Watson21:08

Yes we did.

Presenter21:17

What a bill. Yeah, it was totally cool. And Mark Ravenhill and I then shared a house after we left.

Emily Watson21:17

What a bill.

Presenter21:24

Bristol.

Presenter21:25

And I remember him and I doing one of those self-help books. We had to sort of visualise what we were going to do next. And I said, well, I'd like to get a job at the RSC. And he said, I'd like to have a play on in the West End. And then within a few months, those things both happened. So that was quite a moment for us. And had you voiced your ambition to anyone else so your friends knew what you wanted to do in future? But had you talked to your family about it? I did talk to my family about it. And bless them, my mum and dad were like, yep, okay, you know, we'll see what we can do. I went and did a one-year training at a drum school in London. I managed to persuade a bank manager to give me a loan to pay the fees. And I said, oh, well, I'm going to be on telly next year, so I'll be able to pay you back. Was that true? No, I'm not sure.

Presenter22:15

Emily, let's go to the music. It's your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear? This is Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop. When my daughter was, I think, five months old, we went to New Zealand to make a film. And the man who picked us up from the airport, a guy called Seamus, has now become a lifelong friend. And he had recently stopped being

Presenter22:42

the guy who ran the really, really cool record shop in Wellington.

Presenter22:46

He was now working as a driver and he picked us up with our daughter and he says, Do you want to go the pretty way?

Presenter22:51

So yeah, please so we drove round the bays in Wellington, which if anybody've been there, it's an amazing thing. And he said, Oh, we'll just stop off here at the Surf Club and have a bit of breakfast, which was at this really kind of cool bar place where we had breakfast and he said, Oh, that guy over there, he's the drummer from Fat Freddy's Drop.

Presenter23:09

And we're like, what's that? And then he started playing it to us. It's kind of New Zealand reggae, kind of all kinds of things rolled into one, but beautiful. And this really is a song about finding your person. It's the person who makes you who you are and makes you make sense. If you can, go away and listen to the whole thing because it's a long, slow burn that's really ultra cool and then gets to the point where the lyrics are, I'd step out of the rush for you, which is what love is, I guess.

Emily Watson23:17

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 223:51

I

Speaker 223:52

Step out of the rush for you Step out of the rush for you

Speaker 224:00

Step out of the rush for you

Presenter24:05

Uh

Speaker 224:05

Uh

Presenter24:07

Step out of the rush for you

Presenter24:11

There's nothing that I brought

Presenter24:14

Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop for your husband Jack, who you met Emily at the RSC.

Presenter24:21

Your next big break was when Lars von Trier cast you in Breaking the Waves in 1996. You played Bess McNeil, a young wife persuaded to engage in increasingly risky extramarital sex by her paralysed husband. This was a role that changed your life and it was your very first film. What do you remember about how it was received? It's quite the story because that was the point at which the SAS said to me, go on your undignified way. Literally, they said that to me when I said this was what I was doing. So you told them beforehand? Yeah. And then everything of that upbringing had defined you. I was sort of I felt like I was in free fall.

Presenter25:01

And the thing that caught me was this part, acting, giving yourself over to something. And the experience of making the film was amazing.

Presenter25:13

If being on a sort of religious path is about a search for meaning.

Presenter25:18

And that's what my life.

Presenter25:20

In many ways, had been, this feels more alive and more full of meaning than I have ever felt.

Presenter25:28

And

Presenter25:30

Strange, imaginary, not real ways. It was an immersive process because Las Vendrier didn't, it wasn't a traditional filming process where there were lots of setups and artificial sense of, you know, the camera's here and you're over there and they're changing the shot and they're doing you're waiting around. And it was a handheld camera that was just in the scene, like it, like it was a character in the scene, observing you all the time. So you must have been very immersed in it then? We were very immersed, and the camera was just like another person. It was your friend. You worked alongside Stellan Skarsgård and Catherine Cartledge. What did you learn from them? I was so lucky to have them as role models in my first film because both actors who care passionately about everything that matters and really don't give a toss about the things that don't. And they were.

Presenter26:20

I couldn't have asked for better role models. So you've made this film. I mean, lots of graphic sex scenes, lots of nudity, a cast that you love, and then it's released. Now, listeners might not get the distinction between making a film and releasing it, but they are very different. Well, first of all, it went to the Cannes Film Festival, which I'd kind of, you know, I'd heard of, I was aware of, but I'd no idea what kind of a deal that was. Found myself.

Presenter26:45

Walking up the steps it can in a Dior dress.

Presenter26:49

and then going into the cinema and watching myself naked the size of a

Presenter26:53

Tower block, and then this incredible response to the film. I mean, really.

Presenter26:59

um very, very powerful, overwhelming response that I didn't necessarily understand because I it wasn't part of my world. It felt overwhelming, but it I didn't kind of get the significance of what Lars had done in terms of film.

Presenter27:14

It was the toast of Can. You were nominated for an Academy Award. Yeah, and then it sort of spiralled into a whole press thing.

Emily Watson27:16

were nominated.

Emily Watson27:18

Yeah.

Presenter27:23

I sort of became a little bit catatonic, to be honest. You know, I just didn't really quite know what to do. You were in shock? Yeah, it was a sense of shock. I felt a bit frozen. You know, given all of that, how did you start to pick your way through it and decide your next move? Because it sounds like you were only really starting to find yourself as a person, as an actor. Yeah. And then suddenly, you know, you're on this, you've got the eyes of the world on you. Well, I have to say, through all of this, my husband was an absolute rock and an anchor for me because we just sort of held hands and looked at each other and went, oh my God, what's going on? But we did very much sense that we did that together. And all of those changes, you know, he was there through all of it. And how did your parents feel about what was going on? Well, they were very, very proud of me.

Presenter28:10

And it was also a little bit weird because the organization was very against what I was doing and you know, and they were kind of

Presenter28:21

those conversations that you never quite have and you should have had and, you know, it's complicated. Were you able to to talk to them about it later? To turn it into yes, I was. I think, you know, as I became more more able to articulate

Emily Watson28:32

Uh

Speaker 228:32

Yeah.

Presenter28:38

what was going on and who I was and

Presenter28:40

Mature a bet with it all.

Presenter28:42

Emily, I think we should go to the music. What's your fifth track?

Presenter28:46

My fifth track is the opening movement of Algar's Cello Concerto, performed by Jacqueline Dupre, and.

Presenter28:55

I first heard this when I was a student and in the aftermath of the storm in 1987, the great storm that the BBC failed to predict, when there was sort of a real sense of heightened drama and things being ripped apart, the news came through that she had died.

Presenter29:19

and they played this piece of music on the news and it hit me like a steam train. And then obviously later in my life I then played her in a movie and I got to know this piece very intimately.

Presenter29:32

But hearing that piece of music was the first time that I really started to have an inkling of what it was to be as an artist to be.

Presenter29:42

What I would call absolutely all in. She

Presenter29:47

Became that music. She gave everything. She was 21 to him when she made the recording. And it's a piece of music by a man written towards the end of his life that's full of incredibly intense sense of nostalgia, maybe, regret. You know, it certainly feels a very mature emotional piece. And here she was with every fibre of her vibrating in this piece of music. And that was mind-blowing to me.

Presenter31:18

The opening movement of Elgar's cello concerto in E minor, performed by Jacqueline Dupre, and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter31:30

Emily Watson, after your success in Breaking the Waves, every director was keen to see you. Your next Oscar nomination was for your role in Hilary and Jackie, where as you mentioned, you were cast as Jacqueline Dupre and you learned to play the cello for that role. You'd had a few lessons when you were younger. But is it true that you really practised till your fingers bled?

Speaker 431:46

Yeah.

Emily Watson31:46

Uh

Presenter31:50

I don't know if they bled, but they were blistered, certainly. I mean, I it was a very steep learning curve. You know, it's a trick that you soap the bow so that it doesn't make any sound. And then I learned all the fingering and all the bowing, and then I had a movement teacher help me kind of imitate because she physically inhabited her playing like no one else and really sort of threw herself around with it. I remembered my husband say, I sort of said, How on earth am I going to do this? I mean, it was a terrifying, daunting prospect. And what did he say to you? Fear of universal scorn.

Presenter32:24

It's a good motivator. It is a good motivator. It's not wrong. It's been a great motivator ever since.

Emily Watson32:25

It is a good motivation.

Presenter32:30

So that level of immersion then of just you know, like c blistered fingers and constant cello playing. And it's like anything you take on as an actor. You have to get to you know, like trying to do an Irish accent or something like that. If you d don't get it right.

Emily Watson32:32

Do you know like

Emily Watson32:35

Yeah.

Presenter32:43

Is excruciating, and people howl at you. You know, it's fear of universal scorn, it is a very powerful motivator. And that was the role that Steven Spielberg saw you in, and then a decade later he cast you in Warhorse. I know that that shoot, the first day of it, clashed with your little girl's first day at school. It did.

Emily Watson32:59

You were little girls' first days.

Presenter33:02

And yeah, she was starting primary school and I said, I'm really sorry. I can't come. I have to be there and he to Steven Spielberg. Well, to the producer and they moved it. They did. Yes. Yeah, they moved my first day. So let me

Emily Watson33:09

Two six.

Presenter33:16

Yeah, well he's a he's a dad of many, so he six kids I think he's got, so he would he would get that. Um let's have some more music. Uh this is your sixth choice. What are we going to hear, and why are you taking it to the island? This is part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Morricone.

Emily Watson33:18

Six fifths, I think.

Emily Watson33:19

But

Presenter33:33

And

Presenter33:34

It's a piece of music that my son plays on the piano.

Presenter33:37

Which absolutely turns my heart over every time I hear it. Because this is a film about, it's an absolute love letter to cinema and the power of storytelling. And how this man who has grown up in this small town in Sicily where his mentor and friend was the projectionist in the cinema, and he just fell in love with the film. And the projectionist said to him, Leave here, never come back. You have to go and make something of your life. And he has. And then he's come back for his funeral. And the cinema is being shuttered and closed down and destroyed. And it's all a story about the loss of young love. And then at the very end, he gets something in the will. And it's during the early days of the cinema, they had to cut out all the kisses because of censorship. All the sort of passion had to be cut out of these movies. The projectionist has spliced them all together onto a reel. He has this reel of film, and it's just all the kisses. It's the most beautiful. Anyway, a film that I love, and this is the soundtrack.

Presenter35:41

Part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Eno Morricone.

Presenter35:46

A quote from you then, Emily Watson: acting, if you're doing it right, you're traumatising yourself. Tell me more about that. What do you mean?

Presenter35:54

Well, I think

Presenter35:56

Possibly there's a lot of parts that I've played that have been, you know, had a lot of trauma and sadness involved in the nature of the roles. But I think you are putting yourself into an emotional place which is pretend, you're pretending, but your body doesn't know the difference. So all of those stress hormones and everything stress hormones and your kind of neural pathways are doing the thing that they would do.

Emily Watson36:17

It's an everything

Emily Watson36:19

Yeah.

Presenter36:23

And you're not just doing it the once, you're doing it over and over and over. Okay, how do you deal with that then? That must be. You have to learn to sort of regulate yourself physically and.

Emily Watson36:29

Really hard

Presenter36:33

You know, you come away from doing it

Presenter36:35

big scene and you feel like you've been through the ringer and you have to I have a friend who actually who's a wonderful actress who's had to recently wear a for for health reasons she's had to wear a blood sugar monitor. Oh like a blood glucose. Blood glucose thing.

Emily Watson36:47

Yeah.

Emily Watson36:49

Black Lake Hurst.

Presenter36:50

And she said that not having eaten or drunk anything when she's acting, it's going up and down like crazy.

Presenter37:00

Because of all the stress hormones and all the things that your blood is doing in response to the emotional story that's going on in your chemistry. So do you worry about that? I mean, the body keeps the score. Well, exactly. The body keeps the score. I

Emily Watson37:11

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter37:15

do worry about it, but I think being an actor is like, you know, you're sort of an amateur psychologist anyway.

Presenter37:22

and really annoying amateur at a lot of things.

Presenter37:26

But but I guess you know as the sh Shakespeare said it, your job is to hold a mirror up to nature. And you know, you just try and tell stories as truthfully as you can and you go to places that you need to to do that. And I find walking, it's the rhythm of, you know, like all those therapeutic things that have rhythm, drumming, EMDR, all those kind of things. Meditative buttons. Meditative. Yeah, just walking is something I do pretty much every day. And that helps you decompress. Just walk it out. Yeah.

Emily Watson37:48

All those kind of things.

Emily Watson37:50

But meditative yeah, just walk

Emily Watson37:56

Yeah.

Presenter37:57

Um so do you find it easy to leave characters behind, to leave the you said, you know, the the sort of amateur psychology and inhabit being all in, inhabiting that person. You know, there must be people that stick with you. Yes, I think there are. They are like friends, you know, they're sort of people you've got to know over your life.

Presenter38:17

Dreams, they're like, you know, very strong memories, but you have to put a distance. You can't let them dictate your responses to your real life. You know, you have to let them go and put them on the shelf and get a distance from them. Emily, you talked earlier about the beginning of your career, the pressure you put on yourself not to have people at the SES proved right. They said off you go on your immoral way to kind of pursue this flippity-jibbet career. And you wanted to, you know, be a person of substance and prove them wrong.

Emily Watson38:41

Don't this

Emily Watson38:44

Yeah.

Presenter38:52

How have you continued to make the right choices as an actor? Because you have had critical acclaim throughout your career. You haven't had the missteps that many other actors make. Well, I think there's been one or two, but thankfully they've

Emily Watson39:03

Yeah.

Presenter39:05

They sync pretty quickly. You've executed them elegantly, if there have been. Not visible to my keen eye when I was looking back over your C V.

Speaker 439:15

C V

Presenter39:16

I'd like to take credit for that path, but I get less and less sure of my kind of moral rectitude as I get older. I just think I've been lucky, I've been you do something that gets noticed in that way early on, and there are still to this day I meet people, filmmakers, who say

Presenter39:36

Breaking the Waves is the reason I'm a director. It made me

Presenter39:39

And that has a currency that's just lasted, it's kept me in knickers, you know?

Presenter39:45

A very long time. How long may that continue?

Presenter39:48

Let's have some more music, shall we?

Emily Watson39:49

Music shows.

Presenter39:50

What's next? Your seventh choice today.

Presenter39:52

My husband said to me, Emily,

Presenter39:55

You cannot have Lee Morgan playing Sidewinder because it's like asking Mozart.

Presenter40:00

To play happy birthday.

Presenter40:02

But we've already had Mozart, don't worry about it. I just love this piece and

Presenter40:08

If there is a version of my children that reflects the little girl that I was going to France with Jacques Taty, this is a moment I remember so clearly, driving my kids in the car and listening to this. And my and my husband has he's always been a bringer of music into the house.

Presenter40:27

And we've always listened to loads of different sorts of music, and jazz has been a big part of that, classical, you know, and then the kids have brought their own things in, but it's always a

Presenter40:37

big part of our day and

Presenter40:39

And family holidays, just taking requests and listening to things.

Presenter40:44

But I just remember this moment driving in the car and listening to this and the kids suddenly getting the idea of it being the soundtrack.

Presenter40:52

of the way to see London and people just going about their business and the delight of being in a day when everybody's just you know, the joy of small things, the banal, easy, just going about your business, walking down the street in London.

Presenter41:10

To Lee Morgan, Sidewinder, just joy.

Presenter42:14

Lee Morgan and The Sidewinder. Emily Watson, we've spent quite a lot of time looking back today at your career and your many successes. I wonder what you think that young dreamer, eleven year old Emily, who you described for us earlier, what would she make of it all?

Presenter42:29

I think she'd be delighted and quite surprised. I think she wanted to be a writer. But yeah, no, I think she'd be delighted.

Presenter42:37

You're now one of the more experienced actors on set. What advice do you give to younger artists who are starting out and following you in your footsteps? I know they ask you. Jesse Buckley was quite upfront. That she yeah, you'd given her great advice. I'd say

Speaker 442:48

Yeah.

Presenter42:51

Don't bring your phone.

Presenter42:53

Don't bring your phone to set. Okay. I think that sense of sitting around the fire, being with the best company in the world, and you learn so much about being an actor, but also about being a person and

Presenter43:07

you know, how you're what you do relates to the world and

Presenter43:10

It's like a absolute gold dust, that stuff. And when mobile phones first started appearing,

Presenter43:17

There was a time where you got on set and you went, oh, and people you really respected were just gone. I call them the disappeared. There's now much more of a culture of don't bring your phone to set and people are really realizing that it's an important part. And don't get a tattoo because it puts at least 45 minutes on your call in the morning trying to cover it up. That's the kind of practical advice. I love that combination. So we have the kind of philosophical approach.

Emily Watson43:37

I love

Emily Watson43:38

Beneficiaries.

Presenter43:42

Perfect.

Presenter43:43

Well, you're going to a different campfire very soon. We're going to cast you away to your desert island. It's almost time. Your courier has taken you all over the world. How good are you at adjusting to a new place when you land somewhere?

Presenter43:57

Well, I like to think that I'm quite good, but I'm not very good at the lonely of it. I don't think. That's going to be the problem, the isolation. Okay. I like to jabber away and talk to people and, you know, that's sort of very feeding for me.

Emily Watson44:05

The isolation.

Presenter44:12

What about the practical side? I mean, how will you be able to fend for yourself, keep yourself alive, keep yourself warm and dry? I'll probably give myself food poisoning pretty quickly. Right. I think I'm pretty rubbish. Are you a good cook in real life? No, no, I meant I cook a lot because you know you just do because of life. But I'm.

Emily Watson44:21

Here

Emily Watson44:23

Ta-da.

Emily Watson44:24

No, no, I meant

Emily Watson44:27

But

Speaker 444:28

Isn't it?

Emily Watson44:28

Uh

Presenter44:29

I'm very sad that my daughter describes her boyfriend's mum as a really good cook, which is always a bit of a blow. That's a tough review.

Speaker 444:34

Which is always a bit of a number.

Presenter44:40

Okay, so this isn't shaping up too well.

Emily Watson44:42

Uh

Speaker 444:42

Yeah.

Presenter44:43

What kind of island are you hoping for? What are you imagining? Oh, something balmy, breezy, warm seas, sort of Hawaiian, maybe. Talking, that sounds better. Okay, so at least the vibe is going to be good. Yeah, and a few cliff walks. Yes, absolutely. A bit of bluster. Definitely some bluster. All right, well, we'll let you take one more disc before we cast you away, Emily. What's your last choice today? Okay, so this is.

Emily Watson44:51

Maybe it

Emily Watson44:53

Yeah.

Emily Watson44:55

Yeah.

Emily Watson44:57

Yes, absolutely.

Presenter45:09

A piece by the Citizens of the World Choir, which is a choir that I am a patron of.

Presenter45:17

And when my kids were young, I had a music teacher.

Presenter45:21

who used to come to the House. And when the Dubbs amendment failed to pass in Parliament, which was an attempt to bring unaccompanied minors into this country, refugees, she'd been working with Lord Roberts

Presenter45:37

And

Presenter45:38

He said, Let's start a choir, and they started. Then she knocked on my door and said, Will you be patron?

Presenter45:43

And I think at the time my mum had recently died and my dad had adopted this principle of just say yes to everything. So I thought, I'm going to say yes to that. And it's been the most incredible journey. That was 10 years ago. And it's a choir made up of refugees and displaced people and allies. So it's sort of 50-50 people from here and people not from here. And their brief is to sing music from all around the world that's not religious.

Presenter46:12

And they do a lot of kind of mashup of different cultural things. So there are.

Presenter46:18

fifty odd members of the choir from twenty six different countries around the world, kind of Ukrainian, Iranian, Afghanistan, all around the world. And they sing stuff from loads and loads of different cultures.

Presenter46:30

And to me they are an incredible success story.

Presenter46:34

They're singing on Ed Shirin's latest album. They've sung twice at Glastonbury. They sang with Guy Garvey at the Platinum Jubilee Palace concert. They sang at Kofi Annan's Memorial.

Presenter46:48

And hearing them sing is like taking a bath in the opposite of hate. It's just a beautiful thing.

Presenter46:55

And this is a song that was written for them by Felix Buxton of Basement Jack's, and who is a great supporter of the choir. And yes, this is one of their pieces that they are readying for Refugee Week this year.

Speaker 247:29

Our planet turns

Speaker 247:31

In deep-based events we learn our lessons Share our gifts Time's immortal

Speaker 247:40

No time's the ball

Speaker 447:41

Uh

Presenter47:42

We will sing Citizens of the World Choir with Vula Malinga conducted by Becky Dell.

Presenter47:48

So, Emily Watson, the time's come. I'm going to cast you away to the desert island. I'll give you the books to take with you. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book of your choice. What's it going to be? It's Staying Alive, which is a poetry collection by published by Bloodaxe Books.

Presenter48:05

And why have you chosen it? Why that one? I think poetry is in a way the most insightful if you were to take philosophy, film, art, everything and boil it down to its essence, poetry would be the most successful way to express it. It's a an expression of the human condition that is very potent. And in a collection like that you have very, very different views and

Presenter48:33

expressions of of that.

Presenter48:36

It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to take with you? Well, it's a kind of a massive cheat. Oh, come on. I'm going to take the Tate Modern. Oh, okay. It's not a cheat. There's plenty of cafes and restaurants and toilets. They'll be unmanned. You'll be the only one there. I'll do the cleaning. But they are yours. Exactly. You can dust the paintings and the sculptures, make sure everything's just perfect. Why have you chosen the tape modern? I spend quite a lot of time there when I'm not working. I think being a creative person is a bit like having a dog and you have to take it for a walk every day and just going to see other people's attempts to reflect the nature of life. You know, you feel connected to yourself in some way doing that. Sometimes you go and you think, oh, I don't connect to that at all, don't understand it. And sometimes you have mind-blowing.

Emily Watson48:41

No, come on.

Emily Watson48:46

Well there's plenty of plastic

Emily Watson48:51

You'll be the only one there.

Emily Watson48:53

They are yours.

Emily Watson48:55

Yeah.

Speaker 448:55

B

Emily Watson48:55

It's

Presenter49:26

sense of the power of

Presenter49:28

Creativity in Art.

Presenter49:30

You said that your kids are very creative. Did you take them there while they were growing up? Yeah, my daughter learned to walk.

Emily Watson49:34

But

Presenter49:36

In the Tate, actually. And this the Tate are not going to thank me for this, but we have a trick that we do. That if you take a coin and you stand at the top of the slope in the main gallery, you know, in the turbine hall, if there's nothing on, and you roll the coin from the top of the you started off the top of the slope.

Emily Watson49:48

In the turbine hole.

Presenter49:56

If you're really lucky, it will go all the way down and right to the other end. Oh my goodness, best game ever. You're right, they're gonna hate it, but what a brilliant game. Also, we'll now know who the Data Island Disc's listeners are.

Presenter50:09

Yeah, it'll be causing a riot. Gathering with two P's. That is yours. What a great luxury. Thank you. More people. People should take galleries with them. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Emily, would you save from the waves first if you needed to?

Emily Watson50:16

People should

Presenter50:25

I think that I would take Fat Freddy's drop. Why? Because it's about my person. Emily Watson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's my pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Presenter50:51

Hello, it was lovely chatting to Emily, and I hope she's very happy on her island, wandering around her gallery. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast lots of other actors away over the years, including plenty of Emily's co-stars. You'll find Hamlet's Jesse Buckley, the writer Maggie O'Farrell. You'll also find Monica Dolan, her fellow BAFTA-winning actor in Appropriate Adult in there too. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio managers for today's programme were Sarah Hockley and Jackie Marjoram. The executive production coordinator was Susie Roylands. The content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time where my guest will be the motorcyclist and presenter Guy Martin.

Emily Watson51:57

I'm Noel Titheridge and for BBC Radio 4 from Shadow World. This is Impulsive. What happens when someone's personality changes completely?

Speaker 452:09

It was completely out of character. Never done it before, never done it since.

Emily Watson52:13

And it's because of a prescription drug.

Speaker 452:16

I asked myself, why would you do such a thing? What were you thinking?

Emily Watson52:22

I have been uncovering the shocking side effects linked to medications called dopamine agonists.

Emily Watson52:28

For BBC Radio 4 from Shadow World. This is Impulsive. Subscribe to Shadow World Impulsive Now on BBC Sounds.