Culture

Naomi Watts Thinks David Bowie Was Onto Something

Published

9 months ago

January 19, 2025

Naomi Watts Thinks David Bowie Was Onto Something

Naomi Watts remembers being told that by the time she turned 40, her acting career would be finished.

Now 56, she is fresh off a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as Babe Paley in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.” In March, she’ll star in the movie “The Friend,” based on the National Book Award-winning novel by Sigrid Nunez. And her first book, “Dare I Say It,” out Tuesday, delves into her experience being told at 36 that she was going into early menopause, and navigating that.

“It was shocking to me that half the population was told to zip it through an inevitable time of life,” Watts said of the stigma and silence surrounding perimenopause and menopause. She eventually threw herself into the conversation “lock, stock and barrel,” explaining, “I got sick of holding the secret, which I did for a long time.”

In a video call from Los Angeles, during that brief moment between the glamour of the Golden Globes and the devastation of the fires, Watts spoke about her love of pickleball, her admiration for David Bowie, and her conviction that peppermint tea and milk do not mix.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Pickleball

I’m obsessed with pickleball. Everyone seems to think that if you say you love pickleball you’re really leaning into the old age thing, but I’ve seen people in their 20s in New York getting fired up about it.

Games

Over the Christmas break I played a ton of cards and Bananagrams. I also play this game called Snatch, which is like an aggressive version of Bananagrams. I get pretty competitive, but only when I’m playing games. I think that’s from having a big brother and competing to win. I’m also on a Wordle chain, and whoever wins the day before gets to choose the word. I do that every single day and I’ve only missed a few here and there since we started. My stats are very impressive.

‘Emilia Pérez’

I just watched this Jacques Audiard film and loved it. It’s so innovative and wild, with so many ideas and visuals going on at once. I’d seen his older film “Rust and Bone” with Marion Cotillard, which I also loved. All of the actors in “Emilia Pérez” are just fantastic, and Zoe Saldaña got recognized at the Globes the other night. It’s just a fantastic piece of filmmaking.

Properly Brewed Tea

I drink it all day. I love builder’s tea, strong black tea like PG Tips. It’s got to be made right, though. I have to educate the Americans about how to make it. It has to be drunk with milk. When you order tea in a restaurant or on a plane and they bring you the hot water and the bag together, it’s all wrong. It’s not going to work. You pour the hot water over the bag. Then sometimes when you order tea with milk, they get confused and they bring you a peppermint tea with milk, and I’m like, This is poison!

Le Pavillon de la Reine

I love everything about Paris. I love its romance, I love the walking, I love the restaurants. I like to stay at a place called Le Pavillon de la Reine. It’s a boutique hotel with a fireplace, so it’s lovely in winter.

Cooking

One of my favorite things is to eat at home with friends and have a great meal and great conversation. I tend to do roasts, so a lot of roast chicken and veggies. My mom is a good cook, so I learned a lot from her. She’s not a recipe person, she’s a trial-and-error person — you have to be practiced at that. I didn’t learn to become a good cook until I had kids.

Staying Moisturized

I have horribly cracked feet in these dry winter months so I use lots of Eucerin Intensive Repair lotion to moisturize my skin. I put lotion on at night before bed, and it really helps.

Dogs

I’ve had dogs all my life, and I don’t understand people that don’t love dogs. I barely understand cat people, and I always root for dogs. I like cats; I’m just allergic to them. If you have a cat, though, you better have a dog, too, because at least they’re nice to you.

Representative Sarah McBride

I’m a big fan of her work as an activist and politician. What she’s doing is wonderful. I’m impressed by how she handles everything with such grace despite the fact that she’s always under attack, for all the wrong reasons. She’s working on fighting against L.G.B.T.Q. discrimination, and I think that’s super important.

David Bowie

The first album I ever bought was “Hunky Dory,” and all those songs — every single one — is amazing. “Changes” is the biggest and best in my nostalgic brain. It’s so interesting to think of what he’d be doing now. I wish he was still around. I really do. When you see those little clips and interviews of him way back when, he just knew so much. He was onto something.

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Culture

Can You Identify the Literary Names and Titles Adopted by These TV Shows and Musicians?

Published

4 hours ago

October 20, 2025

Press Room

Can You Identify the Literary Names and Titles Adopted by These TV Shows and Musicians?

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge celebrates allusions to characters and plots from classic novels found in music and television. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books.

Culture

What’s So Great About ‘Slow Horses’? This Scene Says It All.

Published

3 days ago

October 17, 2025

Press Room

What’s So Great About ‘Slow Horses’? This Scene Says It All.

A couple dozen pages into “Clown Town,” Mick Herron’s latest novel, two veteran spies share a bench in London. They’re Jackson Lamb and Diana Taverner, notorious fictional fixtures of MI5, the British intelligence service. Fans of “Slow Horses,” the Apple TV series adapted from Herron’s earlier Slough House books, will recognize the pair as the characters played with brisk professionalism and callused gravitas by Kristin Scott Thomas and Gary Oldman.

Those incomparable actors are a big part of the show’s appeal, but the Britain they inhabit — weary, cynical, clinging to the tattered scraps of ancient imperial glory — is built out of Herron’s witty, corkscrew sentences.

And this bench, like others where Lamb and Taverner meet with some regularity on both screen and page, is hardly an incidental bit of urban furniture. It holds not only their aging bureaucratic bums, but also a heavy load of literary and sociological significance.

An ambient sarcasm hangs in the foul air around his characters. Nearly every word is freighted with a mockery that is indistinguishable from judgment. Herron’s prose bristles with the kind of active, restless grudge against the world that is the sure sign of a moralist.

While spies, bureaucrats and especially politicians come in for comic scolding, the real target of his satire is an administrative regime that will be familiar to many readers and viewers who have never cracked a code or aimed a gun. In interviews, Herron has often noted that unlike John le Carré, to whom he is often compared, he has had no first-hand experience of espionage. But he has spent enough time toiling in offices to understand the absurdity — the banality, the cruelty, the cringeiness — of modern organizational life.

“Slow Horses” is a workplace comedy, and Diana and Jackson — nightmare colleagues and bosses from hell — are its flawed, indispensable heroes. Their nastiness to each other and everyone else is a reflection of their circumstances, but also a form of protest against the ethical rottenness of the system they serve.

The gimlet-eyed Diana, managing up from a precarious perch high in the organization, must contend with the cretinous crème de la crème of the British establishment. The epically flatulent Jackson, a career reprobate exiled to a marginal post far from the center of power, manages down, wrangling MI5’s designated misfits, the Slow Horses who give the series its name. Those poor spies need to be protected from external savagery, internal treachery and their own dubious instincts.

Jackson and Diana seem to share a cynical, self-serving outlook, but what really unites them is that they care enough about the job to do it right. More than that: They may be the last people in London who believe in decency, honor and fair play, embodiments of the humanist sentiment that lurks just below the busy, satirical surface of Herron’s novels. Not that they would ever admit as much — especially not to each other, planted on a public bench, where anyone could be spying on them.

Culture

Can You Identify the European Locations in These Thrillers and Crime Novels?

Published

7 days ago

October 14, 2025

Press Room

Can You Identify the European Locations in These Thrillers and Crime Novels?

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights the locations of thrillers and crime novels set around Europe. (Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, most questions offer an additional hint about the location.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.