The loss of David Lynch still hurts, but Naomi Watts said the great filmmaker wasn’t ready to quit; he still wanted to work. Watts told the Los Angeles Times that she had lunch with Lynch and Laura Dern in late November.
“We had a beautiful lunch at his house,” Watts said. “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.“
Lynch cast Watts in Mulholland Drive, after which he became “a real mentor and friend.” Watts would reunite with Lynch on Rabbits, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks: The Return. “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.“
However, she did share one memory of that final meeting. “I took an accidental picture,” she said. “We took a picture of all of us, but then my camera remained open and I bumped it — it was a picture of the perfect architecture of his house and two palm trees. It just screamed L.A. and David Lynch. I sent the picture of the three of us, and then that random picture that said so much. It was a perfect blue sky. His house — he really loved that space. Blue skies, hope, magic, just dreamy. I sent him a text and he wrote back the most incredible David response.“
As for what Lynch’s response was, Watts kept that a secret.
After Lynch’s death, Watts posted a tribute on Instagram, saying, “The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?! It wasn’t just his art that impacted me – his wisdom, humor, and love gave me a special sense of belief in myself I’d never accessed before.“
