More than 23 years after David Lynch facilitated her big break, Naomi Watts was ready to serve as the auteur’s muse once again.
Following Lynch’s death at age 78 in January, the 2x Oscar-nominated actress recounted her last time seeing the Twin Peaks creator during a lunch in late November with him and fellow Lynch collaborator Laura Dern.
“We had a beautiful lunch at his house,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I knew he’d been unwell but he was in great spirits. He wanted to go back to work — Laura and I were like, ‘You can do it! You could work from the trailer.’ He was not, in any way, done. I could see the creative spirit alive in him.”
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After Lynch died of cardiac arrest, with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease listed as an underlying cause, Watts said his loss was “so deeply, deeply upsetting.”
Watts’ breakout role came in Lynch’s 2001 neo-noir mystery Mulholland Drive, before starring in his 2002 short Rabbits. She and Dern also appeared in Lynch’s 2006 feature Inland Empire and his 2017 Showtime series revival Twin Peaks: The Return, which turned out to be his final project.
“I thought I would see him in a couple of weeks [after that last lunch] because I was here in L.A.,” Watts said. “There’s a lot I could share but I want to be private about it because of his family. But it was a really powerful meeting that filled me with just so much love and hope.”
Watts previously remembered Lynch as “a real mentor and a friend” after his death, explaining he “was very instrumental to me even being in America. I wouldn’t have stayed had I not met David Lynch.”
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