Naomi Watts learned firsthand what it’s like to work with animals on set. Her introduction to the star of
Penguin Bloom—that would be the title character, a magpie named Penguin—was, um, let’s call it “overly familiar.” The actor, who plays Sam Bloom in the based-on-a-true-story Gala Presentation at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, shared the story of how she got acquainted with one of the live birds who co-starred in the moving family film.“I have a great ice breaker story that I’m happy to share with you,” said Watts, speaking to the press from her quarantine three hours north of Toronto where she’ll be shooting her next project. “Pretty much on the first day the bird was on my head, chirping away and the next thing you know you feel a nice warm sensation trickling down your face. Sure enough it went all the way down and straight into my mouth.”
The anecdote goes a long way to endorse early twentieth century actor W.C. Fields’ oft-quoted showbiz advice: never work with children or animals.
Penguin Bloom, however, has both—and both the trained magpies and the movie’s three child actors are what sit at the emotional core of the story. The movie, which also stars Jacki Weaver and
The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln, documents the aftermath of a terrible accident suffered by professional surfer and mom of three, Sam Bloom. An accident leaves her paralyzed in two-thirds of her body and psychologically devastated over the things she feels she can no longer do.“When I came home from hospital I had a dark cloud over my head. It made everyone sad,” says Bloom, who called in from Australia for the press conference. But when an injured magpie came into the family’s life, everything changed (Sam’s husband, photographer Cameron Bloom, began documenting Penguin’s life with the family on their
wildly popular Instagram account). A book followed and the movie was born out of the publication.Still, how do you get a bird to hit its mark? “That was the thing that made me nervous,” admitted Watts, “like ‘How do we get a performance out of a bird?’ Magpies are famously not super friendly. It was concerning to me but they walked me through it and said, ‘No we’re going to do it with trained birds, we’re going to do it with a little bit of animatronics and a little bit of CGI.' Now, I think we ended up with only a small amount of animatronics and CGI. Mostly—somewhere around 90 per cent—was the true, real life birds and they absolutely stole the scenes every single day.”[video_embed id='2033511']RELATED: Eli Goree scores the role of a lifetime as Cassius Clay in Regina King's 'One Night in Miami' [/video_embed]Watts wasn’t alone in her opinion about the scene-stealing birds. Co-star Lincoln backed her up, while adding his own caveat about the adorable boys who played the Blooms’ three sons. “Never work with children or animals,” he advised, “When they’re good, no one's going to be looking at you.” As filming progressed, Lincoln says that he realized that his job description basically amounted to “Trying not to get acted off the screen by a magpie.”Director Glendyn Ivin was more sanguine about the whole magpie situation. “Penguin is a wild bird in the story and was treated as a wild bird on set,” he said. “We had to go with what Penguin wanted to do.”
Penguin Bloom is part of TIFF’s Gala Program and screens at the Tiff Bell Lightbox on Thursday, September 17 at both 8:30 and 9:00pm.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 10 to September 19.[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Little girl preciously holds her newborn puppy [/video_embed]
