The Sunday Times: Scotland – Sunday 14th August, 2005

Emily Watson was wary of taking a part in Wah Wah, Richard E Grant’s directorial debut, but the script won her over writes Claire Prentice.

Emily Watson has just returned to her London home after nipping out to buy a loaf of bread. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve done all day,” she says, laughing apologetically. But her domesticity doesn’t end there; she has also been clearing the spare room and putting up shelves.

Seven months pregnant with her first child, she is busy getting the baby’s room ready in the Bermondsey home she shares with her former actor husband Jack Waters.

“I feel like a 10 ton truck,” says Watson, laughing, something she does a lot. “I’ve been very lucky, I haven’t suffered from morning sickness. I’m enjoying having time to be at home and get organised.”

It sounds terribly unshowbizzy but then Watson, 38, is resolutely down-to-earth. Best known for her remarkable, raw performance in Lars von Trier’s searing 1996 film Breaking the Waves, which won her the first of two Oscar nominations, she has been continuously employed on both sides of the Atlantic for the last decade. But despite meaty roles in Angela’s Ashes, Gosford Park, the Hannibal Lecter prequel Red Dragon and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Watson could still walk down most high streets without drawing a second glance.

“I don’t get recognised that much, thankfully,” she concurs. “The first time it happens it feels nice and ticklish but it soon wears off.”

This week she is coming to the Edinburgh International Film Festival for the world premiere of her new film, Wah Wah, which marks Richard E Grant’s debut as a writer and director. It’s a tale of middle-class misery set on the boiling plains of Swaziland; a home counties tragedy played out thousands of miles from home.

“When Richard called to ask if I would read his script I said yes of course, but with some dread – so many actors try to write and it’s crap…” she suddenly breaks off mid-sentence, adding “Gosh, I shouldn’t say that, I write too.”

It’s a typical Watson reverse; funny, self-deprecating and self-conscious to a fault, she continually stops to rephrase what she is saying, anxious to avoid offending anyone or making herself sound overly serious or trivial.

Her reservations disappeared as soon as she read the script. Inspired by Grant’s childhood in Swaziland, Wah Wah is set in 1969, during the last gasp of colonial Africa, and focuses on the dysfunctional Compton family, whose gradual disintegration under the weight of adultery, booze and self-hate mirrors the end of British rule. In a cast full of dislikable suburbanites who pride themselves on being part of the swinging safari set, Watson knew immediately she wanted to play the part of Grant’s stepmother, the admirably practical Ruby Compton.

Ruby is American, a former air hostess who comes to town and ruffles everybody’s feathers. “She is a very different character for me. I usually get to play victims and tortured souls, so it was very liberating to play someone who is such a…” She stops to scold herself for losing her train of thought. “Pregnancy is doing my head in, I can’t remember words. Who is such a… livewire.”

Watson gives a fine performance among a stellar cast which includes Miranda Richardson, Celia Imrie, Julie Walters and Gabriel Byrne, playing Ruby’s abusive alcoholic husband, Harry.

Wah Wah is the first film ever made in Swaziland and filming was a logistical nightmare. The production team were, according to Watson, “swinging by the seat of their pants every day”.

“It was a risk, but the risky ones are always the fun ones,” she adds. “It was one of those situations where you are all thrown together in this big adventure and you just have to get on with it.”

Fun seems to be a big attraction for Watson, who conveys an air of practical amusement in almost every role she plays. And while the camera loves her expressive face and scrubbed English good looks, she freely admits she does not have the kind of striking beauty which dominates Hollywood billboards. Nor did filming Red Dragon convince Watson that her future lay in LA.

“The things I enjoy the most are the little scruffy things. They are the scripts that jump out at me. I’ve just tried to vary what I’ve done and work with good people. I’ve had a pretty good run so far.”

It’s an admirable attitude, but sometimes that means missing hits. Watson turned down the part of Elizabeth I in Shekhar Kapur’s film Elizabeth, the role that ultimately made a star of Cate Blanchett.

She also passed on the title role in Amelie, a part the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet had written as a love-letter to Watson’s droll innocence. Watson insists she does not regret either decision. Not least because it works both ways. Watson got her own big break when Helena Bonham Carter pulled out of filming Breaking the Waves with the famously demanding von Trier a few weeks before shooting started on Skye.

In her place he cast Watson as Bess, an ingenue from a remote religious Scottish community who, when her new husband is paralysed on an oil rig, believes that she can save his life by sleeping with other men. It received a standing ovation at Cannes and catapulted Watson into the limelight.

The daughter of an architect and a teacher, Watson enjoyed a privileged yet bohemian upbringing. As a child she had no plan to become an actress, but decided to give it a go after reading English at Bristol University, borrowing £5,000 from the bank to put her through drama school. Looking back she says she was terribly irresponsible, but work came rapidly, first at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she met her husband, then the West Yorkshire Playhouse, followed by the National Theatre. Then came Breaking the Waves. It was followed by the controversial biopic Hilary and Jackie for which Watson scooped another Oscar nomination for her performance as the cellist Jacqueline du Prê.

Watson seems to delve deeper into herself and produce her best work when playing extreme characters and collaborating with strong-willed directors. How did she find working with Grant, the archetypal eccentric English gent, on Wah Wah? “He has done a lot of work with Robert Altman so I knew we would speak the same language. He is a first-time film-maker but because it was the story of his life he had a very strong vision of it. It could be very intense, we were literally re-enacting bits of his life while he was sitting there vibrating with emotion.”

Watson has no intention of giving up work after the baby is born. Upcoming films include Separate Lies, the directorial debut of Julian Fellowes, who wrote Gosford Park, and The Proposition, a western written by musician Nick Cave, alongside John Hurt and Guy Pearce. She is reunited with Grant in the Tim Burton animation Corpse Bride along with Johnny Depp, Albert Finney and Christopher Lee.

In the future Watson has her sights set on writing, producing and directing and has already written two scripts with her husband.

Watson enjoys writing but admits to finding the process tiresome. “There are lots of things I still want to do but I will never give up my day job. I love turning up on set at 5am and working right through until midnight. It’s completely absorbing. The downside is that it’s really scary sometimes when you don’t know where the work is going to come from. It gets unbalanced. I’m not going to pretend we’ve got it all sewn up,” she says with refreshing honesty. “Do you think anyone does?”

The world premiere of Wah Wah is on Aug 17 at Cineworld (formerly UGC Cinema) Fountainpark, Edinburgh. Separate Lies is on release from Sept 16; Corpse Bride from Oct 21; the release date for The Proposition is to be confirmed.