Desert Island Luxury and Final Choice

Hello, I'm Laurena Verne and this is the Desert Island Discks podcast from BBC Radio four. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes twenty eight days earlier than everyone else Iope you enjoy listen Castaay this week is Emily Watson, one of the most respected character actors of her generation She began her career on stage joining the RSC in nineteen ninety two. Her breakthrough film roles, in Lars vonri's Break in the Waves, and as Jacqueline Du Prey in Hillary and Jackie, followed a few years later. She was nominated for Academy Awards for both. She learned how to play the cello for Hilary and Jackie, an early indication of the commitment that has helped her maintain a thirty year run of critically acclaimed performances. Angela's Ashes, Ghostford Park, Punch Drunk Love, The Book Thief, smallall thingsings like these, Appropriate Adult, Chernobyl, Hamnet, The Billion dollar TV franchise Dune If there is a common thread in her work, it might be exploring ideology, hierarchies, and power Her own story starts in London, where during her strict upbringing, she found refuge in books. She refers to herself as a storyteller to this day. She says, I love the sense of creating and inhabiting something. feeling of making it feel magically real. That's the addiction. Emily Watson, welome to Desert Island Disc. Thank you very much. veryery nice to be here. Well, how wonderful to have you and a job that's an addiction. I mean, that's quite a lucky thing to have.'m so luck. And that feeling of making it feel real, is that making it feel real to you or to an audience or both? Particularly with film, you can never predict how an audience is going to respond to something and that's something utterly beyond your control I always think Be an actor, you have to be a bit of an idiot and you have to retain that sense of childlike wonder where make belief is real And it's still there somehow. that it feels real to you. In the moment, It feels real. And is music ever part of that process My relationship to music I find it really interesting and kind of a bit screwed up and I remember when I first got to the RSC being handed a mix tape by Ian Dury. What? Yes? I was doing a show at the RSC called a Jovial Crew and he had been invited in to do write songs for it And he turned up in the rehearsal room and gave everybody a mixtape to listen to. And I was so recently, I guess, not yet emerged from my upbringing, which was very reclusive and strict, and We weren't allowed to you know engage with popular culture, popular music, all sorts of things. Obviously, of course I did. but There was a part of me that had grown up in this way and was always felt like I was on the outside looking in And he gave me this mixtape and I just remember being utterly baffled by the idea of This was a sort of pleasurable leisure activity that would contribute to the creative work that we were doing And then slowly kind of listening to it and you know, then over the years, directors have done that. Like Paul Thomas Anderson had this fabulous collection of music. major music nd, isn't it? Yeah for Punch Drunk Love. and I think I've over the years become I've You know, through the people I've met, through my husband who listens to a lot of music, through my kids come to a realization of how important it is in my imagination But I think you know that's been quite a journey. Yes, to take it from it being a kind of illicit activity at the beginning and right with through to being free to kind of enjoy it. To be fair though, if you're going to get your first mix tape from anyone, Ian J he's got to be top of the list, Emily. Yeah, no, he was. it's pretty cool. Well, of course, you're sharing your discks with us today, so I think we should get started with your first Okay, my first disc is my curly headed baby sung by Paul Robon and This is a song my granny sang to me when I was a baby I kind of wondered why am I drawn to this song to talk about it now And I think When I was very small, I had such a strong feeling of being utterly loved. And The lyric that stays with me from the song is Do you want the stars to play with? Do you want the moon to run away with And that idea of being a dreamer and being free and having your imagination set on fire by the imaginative world, by the dream world Very, very powerful sort of later in my upbringing. I was very strongly given the impression that dreaming was bad and it was a an activity that would be lead to my disruption that dreaming wasn't allowed. But I think I had this very, very early connection dreaming and how powerful it was and I've always had wild dreams all my life. curly headed baby sung by Paul Robeson with the Rita Williams Singers and the Jeff Love Orchestra, bringing back memories of your maternal grandma, Emily Watson. So let's go back to the beginning, then. You were born in London in nineteen sixty seven to Richard and Catherine, following your big sister, Harriet. What are your memories of early family life Joy, fun, you know, being a very strong unit, very strong team. As a small child, I think I was very joyful. Joyful, and you also said a dreamer, so creative, imaginative. all the things that we would expect a little girl who would grow up to become an actress to be. Yes, absolutely. Tell me about your parents, your father, Richard, he was an architect. My dad was an architect and my mum was an English teacher and They were very smart, cultured loving parents, but also then became part of the School of Economic Science, which was a religious organisation became a very, very big part of our lives. So when I was around It's that then became a really strong focus of our lives. I want to talk about that more, but set the scene for us a little bit. Tell us about your dad. So he was an architect. He was an architect. Where did he practice? As a young man, he was an artist and he was a brilliant mathematician and a poet And then everyone said to him, you're good at maths, you're good at art, be an architect, and he went off to study architecture. He and my mom got married while he was still a student. They had my sister really young on a train about on a change M of his work he was doing designed for assisted living, converting places and designing partments for people with disabilities, wheelchairs, that kind of thing. You worked for local councils. he did a lot of that kind of stuff. A lot of like municipal architecture. And your mum was an English teacher. She was an English teacher. Yeahah, she was a very good English teacher actually. I have occasionally people come up to me on the tube and say, excuse me and I think they want to say, o, I saw you in L L laa. they say, yourour mum was my English teacher. And I still remember her and she was amazing. So she was one of those special teachers that laid people up. Did she do that for you with the subject? Shakespeare, like No I mean we had because of the way we were brought up, we weren't supposed to engage with popular culture so much We didn't have a television I read a lot of books and my momum really fed that. She didn't, know, they didn't sort of buy into the sort of strictest version of what our lives were supposed to be She used to go to the second hand bookshop at the end of the road and come home at the end of the week with just a big pile of books and I would deevour them I read War and Peace when I was eleven. Ling? I know, Rather I think I had a race with a friend at school because you know we had to entertain ourselves in those days. My mom was very much a wordsmith. loved Shakespeare and introduced me to Shakespeare at a young age where we went to see The RSC when I was seven, I think, I saw a production of as you like it and muched about it. I think I remember sort of practically stopping the show because I was laughing so much. I just loved it. Emily, I think we' better take a minute for some music. This is your second choice today. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it with you to your island today? This is part of the soundtrack to Mononqu by Jacques Taty. One of the things that my parents did, which was amazing, was they took us to the cinema. So this we saw very young. When I was four, maybe we drove to the south of France in a Renaultx four But before we went They took us to see Monsieur Uoulu's holiday the Jacques Tati movie. and They must have taken us more than once and then we had The record we had the LP of it they like and we had a very, very thin record collection which was mostly Mozart, but it had this monarch in it and It's a film and music that's about Everything you see is absurd and delightful and hilarious. I'd sort of got so into this that by the time we arrived in Calais and drove off the boat I thought everything I saw was hilarious. I thought every French person I saw was clown designed to make me laugh. I'd sort of so absorbed it anyway. It's a piece of music my sister and I listen to over and over and we loved We didn't have access to very much music, but this was very special. part of the film soundtrack to Molenclf performed by Georgge Durban and his orchestra. Emily, your family were members of an organization called the School of Economic Science. How would you describe it exactly It's a religious organization. It has a belief system that is very devotional and full and people give their lives to it. And, you know, I think at the center of it is a philosophy that is a beautiful thing. It's sort of spiritual communism that everybody is. the same. But in practice well for us as children, it wasn't like that. It was very restrictive and is very, very strict, but also very repressive to women and young girls. destructive in some ways. So very mixed I mean it's been described as controversial. Some people have likened it to a cult. And as you say, among the very strict expectations that you grew up with were these ideas around gender roles. So what did that mean for you as a little girl? Well, my sort of instinct to be, you know a sort of dreamer and allowing your imagination to take you elsewhere and all over the place was my salvation in that because it sort of kept that part of me alive. and my parents really fed that. They didn't enforce a lot of the strictness. but I think There was very much an expectation for women that you would become a wife and a mother. maybe a teacher, but that the idea of having a career and being ambitious and all of those things was I'm sure things have changed now, but it was very much idea of being independent was very frowned on. And some former pupils at SES schools have talked about violence and intimidation and there was an independent inquiry that found some pups had been subjected to criminal levels of violence. The school apologized How did you navigate your own school days and did you see any of that? I did see some of it and I think I navigated it by keeping my head down and being G for as long as I could stomach that. Cuddertainenly, while I was at school, as I got older, then I just sort of questioned it more and more and more and when the logic of life is staring you in the face, you go, well, hang on a minute, that doesn't make sense and that doesn't make sense. Tell me more about that. When did that start to happen? Well, really as a teenager, I mean I sort of had the urge to be there and to leave. And I went off to university and for a while, I sort of felt like I was leading a double life because I was doing leading a normal life and going out and doing everything that young people do, but at the same time I was returning every week to these sessions and point where it didn't make sense anymore U And then we had a kind of a falling out over me doing Breaking the waves, which that was the break between Yeah. that was the sort of beginning of the end. I mean, it still took me a while to extricate myself, I think When you've grown up in that situation, the fear of leaving something is wired in if you've been born to it. Absolutely and your network is there and also you've internalised a lot you absolutely have. What was that like for you kind of working that out? I was thinking about this on the car in the way here that in relation to music, when I was five years old I was asked to write a piece of music to set a piece of scripture music I chose a sentence, I think it's in Bg of Gita or the you panishhers which says They who deny the self return to a godless birth, blind, enveloped in darkness. And that was kind of the this sort of sentence that was hanging over you that if you didn't embrace the teaching and the way of life, that there was this terrible fear that you would all religions have it. It's the way to control people, I guess. And I was a very, very devotional and loving child, as many, many children are and I sort of embraced it all and believed in it all. And so the journey from there to Finding myself, ironically, which is what the whole thing was supposed to be about, was finding yourself. but just being myself being my authentic natural self with a long journey. and you know, obviously we're all still on that journey. I wonder about your parents as well. I mean, you know it sounds like life at home was less strict than life at school certainly. How do you now as an adult look back at you know their choice to be part of the SES and the appeal, you know of the central tenantets of the organization for them? It's We'll always be confusing that because they obviously loved us so much, but they did I think un'm wittingly put us potentially in harm's way. We were okay because we had them, but other people maybe were not And looking back at yourself as that little girl who was, you know, it sounds eager to please, eager to do well, but also had this spirit of a dreamer inside yourself, how did you nurture that? How did that stay alive through those years when reading? reallyally reading My parents always took us to cinema and we went to see amazing films I don't know. he just kind of chose me in a way. I kind of thought well, I'll try and be an actor and then I got a job at the RSC and that was like a You know, I always you know know that's a TV series that I discovered When my children are little, Mr. Ben. Oh yeah. It's like changing you go into the changing room, there's a costume and there you're suddenly you're off in this world. I often think that on set, it's like that. It's like and then as if by magic The shopkeeper appeared. It's time for some more music, I think. Emily Watson, disisk number three. please, what have you got for us This is part of the Adaggio from Mozart's seererenade in B Flat for thirty Wind instruments. This interestingly, part of the culture at this SES was that Music that we were allowed to listen to was Mozart. Mozart was conscious music You know, we did listen to other things, but that was sort of the, you know, the kind of the guidance And so we had in our very thin record collection, we had this. and my father loved it and longong before it became a brilliantly used piece in the film Amadeus, which that film I absolutely love. It also I connect to it because During lockdown early in the pandemic where none of us really knew where we were heading and It was kind of terrifying. And anyway, I'm very lucky to live quite close to Greenwich Park And so that was our daily walk. And Greenwich Park is also quite close to Trinity College of Music And one day we were walking in the park and it was that insanely beautiful bright hot spring weather with green everywhere We came around the corner and there's lots of sort of nooks and crannies and hills and dells in Greenwich Park into this little sort of del and they're socially distanced with kind of bicycles and hoodies all over the place with music stands where these kids Trinity College of Music playing this piece was taking in its beauty and and a moment where realization of this is what we stand to lose This is Wh we are, we have evolved We can do this. Our young people are here My choice in this park making this incredibly beautiful sound And you know, you drive through London and the lifeblood of the city was closed. you know, the theaters were closed, music Everything' gone I felt like this I would fight for this You know, this is something that I believe is really, really, truly good. And so this piece of music You know, it was incredibly moving and people didn't know whether to stop and listen Because was that a gathering You know, and you could people see people standing around with tears in their eyes And I feel very grateful to those students for that moment. I don't know who they are or where they are now, and hopefully they're all having an amazing careers. but It was a very powerful moment Part of the Edaggio from Mozart seererenade in B Flat's K three hundred sixty one performed by the Academy of Staint Martin in the Fields Wind ensemble, conducted by Sir Neve Mariner Emily Watson, at eighteen then, you went to the University of Bristol to study English. What was it like to be free to live life on your own terms? It must have been quite overwhelming. It was very overwhelming. I think I was deeply unprepared for it, but I kind of gravitated to the theatre and I did a lot of student plays. I began to have a sense of this is how I define myself. these are the people that I to hang out with Yeah, you had some interesting peers around you, didn't you're talking to the people. I mean David Nichols, the writer, screenwiter who wanted to be an actor in those days. He was at Bristol same time as you. You had the now director of the old vic, Matthew Wat. Yeah My Ravenhill. Playwrights Ravenhill yeah. Did you kind of work together? wereere you in Yeah did did. Matthew and I played Benedict and Beatrice in M much to About Nothing, and David Nichols was Dgbro What a bill. Yeah. start. And Mark Ravenhill and I then shared a house after we left Bristol And I remember him and I doing one of those self help books We had to sort of visualize what we were going to do next. And I said, Well, I'd like to get a job at the RSC. and he said, I'd like to have a play on in the West End And then within a few months those things both happened. So that was That was quite a moment for us. And had you voiced your ambition to anyone else? So your friends knew what you wanted to do in future, but had you talked to your family about it? I did talk to my family about it. them my mum and dad were like, yeep, okay, you know, well you see what we can do I went and did a one year training at a drum school in London I manag to persuade a bank manager to give me a loan to pay the fees. and I said, Oh, I'm going be on Telly next year, so I'll be able to pay back. Was that true? No I'm sure Emily, let's go to the music. It's your fourth choice today. What are we going to hear? This is Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop When my daughter was, I think, five months old, we went to New Zealand to make a film. and The man who picked us up from the airport el S Sheamus has now become a lifelong friend And he had recently stopped being the guy who ran the really, really cool record shop in Wellington. He was now working as a driver and he picked us up with our daughter who says Do do you want to go the pretty way So yetly. so we drove around the bays in Wellington, which if anybody you've been there, it's an amazing thing. And he said, Oh well just stop off here at the sof club and have a bit of breakfast which was at this really kind of cool bar place that we had breakfast. and he said, Oh, that guy over there, he's the drummer from Fat Fredd's dro What wass that? And then he started playing it to us It's kind of New Zealand reggae kind of all kinds of things rolled into one, but beautiful. And this really is a song about Finding your person It's the person who makes you who you are and It makes you make sense If you can, go away and listen to the whole thing because it's a long Slow burn That's really ultra cool and then gets to the point where Lrics are I'd step out of the rush for you which is What love is, I guess Ernie by Fat Freddy's Drop for your husband Jack, who you met Emily at the RSC. Your next big break was when Lars Vontrier cast you in Breaking the Waves in nineteen ninety six. You played Bess McNeil, a young wife persuaded to engage in increasingly risky extramarital sex by her paralyzed husband. This was a role that changed your life and it was your very first film. What do you remember about how it was received? It's quite the story because that was the point at which the SAS said to me go on your undignified way. literally they said that to me and I said this was what I was doing. So you told them beforehand. Yeah. then everythingvery Upbring had defined you. I was sort of, I felt like I was in free fall and the thing that caught me Was this part acting giving yourself over to something and The experience of making the film was Amazing Being on a sort of religious path is about a search for meaning And that's what my life in many ways had been This feels more alive and more full of meaning than I have ever felt and strange, imaginary, not real ways. It was an immersive process because Laz Vontria didn't it wasn't a traditional filming process where there were lots of setups and artificial sense of You know, the camera's here and you're over there and they're changing the shot and they're you're waiting around and It was a handheld camera that was just in the scene like it was a character in the scene observing you all the time. So you must have been very immersed in it then. We were very immersed and the camera was just like another person, it was your friend. You worked alongside Stellen Scarsgard and Catherine Cartilidge. What did you learn from them? I was so lucky to have them as role models in my first film because actors who care passionately about everything that matters really don't give a tos about the things that don't and they were couldn't have asked for better role models So you've made this film. I mean lot of graphic sext scenes, a lot of nudity, a cast that you love. and then it's released. Now listeners might not get, you know the distinction between making a film and releasing it, but they are very different. Well, first of all, it went to the Cann Film Festival, which I''t, you know, I'd heard of, I was aware of what I had no idea what kind of a deal that was, found myself Walking up the steps it can in a deor dress. and then going into the cinema and watching myself naked the size of a P blog And then this incredible response to the film. I mean, really Um, very, very powerful, overwhelming response that I didn't necessarily understand because It wasn't part of my world. It felt overwhelming, but I didn't kind of get the significance of Lars had done in terms of film It was the toast of Cann. you were nominated for an Academy awward. Yeah. and then it sort of spiralled into a whole press thing and I sort of became a little bit catatonic to be honest, you know, I just didn't really quite know what to do. You were in shock? Yeah, it was a sense of shock. I felt a bit frozen. You know, given all of that, how did you start to pick your way through it and decide your next move? Be it sounds like you were only really starting to find yourself as a person, as an actor Yeah. And then suddenly, you know you're on this you've got the eyes of the world on you. Well, I have to say through all of this, my husband was an absolute and an anchor for me because We just sort of held hands and looked at each other and went, Oh my god, what's going on? but we did very much sense that we did that together. and All of those changes, you know, he was there through all of it And how did your parents feel about what was going on? Well, they were very, very proud of me And it was also a little bit weird because The organization was very against what I was doing and, you know, and they were kind of those conversations that you never quite have and you should have had and you know It's Were you able to talk to them about it later today? Yes. Yes, I was. I think, you know, as I became more able to articulate was going on and who I was and mature a bit with it all Emily, I think we should go to the music. What's your fifth track? My fifth track is the opening movement of Algar Cello cononcciertto. perform my Jacquelinda Preay and I first heard this when I was a student and in the aftermath of the storm in nineteen eighty seven, the Great Storm that the BBC failed to predict when there was sort of a real sense of Tightens drama and You know, things being ripped apart The news came through that she had died and played this piece of music on the news and it hit me like a steam train. And then obviously later in my life, I then played her in a movie and I got to know this piece very intimately But Hearing that piece of music was the first time that I really started to have an inkling of what it was to be as an artist to be what I would call absolutely all in S came that music, she gave everything. She was twenty one J when she made the recording. and it's a piece of music by a man written towards the end of his life that's full of incredibly tenense sense of nostalgia maybe regret, you know It certainly feels a very mature emotional peace and here she was every fibber of her vibrating in this piece of music And that was mind blowing to me The opening movement of Elgar's Cello concerto in E Mor performed by Jacqueline D de Prey and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli Emily Watson, after your success in Breaking the Waves, every director was keen to see you. Your next Oscar nomination was for your role in Hillary and Jackie, where as you mentioned, you were cast as Jacqueline de Prey. and you learned to play the cello for that role. You'd had a few lessons when you were younger. Is it true that you really practised till your fingers bled Uh I don't know if they blred, but they were blistered, certainly. ye I mean I it was a very steep learning curve, you know, it's a trick that you bow so it doesn't make any sound and then I learned all the fingering and all the bowing and then I had a movement teacher helped me kind of imitate because she physically inhabited her playing like no one else really sort of threw herself around with it. I rembered my husband I sort of said how on earth Am I going to do this I mean, it was a terrifying, daunting prospect. And what did he say to you? We in fear of universal school which is It's a good motivator. It's a good motivator. It's not wrong. It's been a great motivator ever since. So that level of immersion then of just, you know, like blisted fingers and constant cello playing. And it's like anything you take on as an actor. You have to get, you know, like trying to do an Irish accent or something like that. If you don't get it right is excruciating and people howl at you, you know, it's fear of universal scorn is a very powerful motivator. And that was the role that Steven Spielberg saw you in. And then a decade later, he cast you in Warhor.orse. I know that that shoot, the first day of it clashed with your little girl's first day at school. It did And yeah, she was starting primary school and I said, I'm really sorry Come I have to be there and to Steven Spielberg. Well, to the producer and they moved it. They did Yes. Yeah, they moved my first day Yeah, well, he's a dad of many. So six kids I think he's got. so he he would get that Let's have some more music. This is your sixth choice. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it to the island? This is part of the soundtrack to cinema Paradiso by Maraconi and It's a piece of music that my son plays on the piano. which absolutely turns my heart over every time I hear it becausecause this is a film about it's an absolute love letter to cinema and the power of storytelling. and how this man who has grown up in this small town in Sicily where his mentor and friend was the projectionist in the cinema and he just fell in love with the film. And the projectionist said to him, Leave here never come back. You have to go and make something of your life and he has and then he's come back for his funeral And the cinema is being shuttered and closed down and destroyed. And it's all story about the loss of young love And then at the very end you get something in the will and it's During the early days of the cinema they had to cut out all the kisses. prof of censorship, all the sort of passion had to be cut out of these movies protectionist to splice them all together onto a rael. He has this real of film and it's just all the kisses. It's the most beautiful film that I love and this is the soundtrack. Part of the soundtrack to Cinema Paradiso by Eno Morocone. quote from you then, Emily Watson, acting, if you're doing it right, you're traumatising yourself Tell me more about that. What do you mean Well, I think posossibly there's a lot of parts that I've played have been You know, had a lot of trauma and sadness involved in the nature of the roles But I think you are Putting yourself into an emotional place. which is pretend, you're pretending Body doesn't know the difference So all of the stress hormones and everything. stress hormones and your kind of neural pathways are doing the thing that they would do. and you're not just doing it the once you're doing it over and over and over. Okay, how do to deal with that, then? That must be Really You have to learn to sort of regulate yourself physically and You know, youve come away from doing it big scene and you feel like you've been through the ringer and you have to I have a friend who actually, who's a wonderful actress who's had to recently wear a for health reasons, she's had to wear a blood sugar mon. Its like a blood glucose. blood glucose thing And She said that not having eaten or drunk anything when she's acting It's going up and down like crazy becausecause of all the stress hormes and all the things that your blood is doing in response to the emotional story that's going on in your emistry So do you worry about that? I mean, the body keeps the score? Well exactly the body keeps the score I Do worry about it But I think being an actor is like, you know, you're sort of an amateur psychologist anyway and really annoying amateur at a lot of things. but I guess, you know, is the They said it Your job is to hold a mirror up to nature. And you know you just try and tell stories as truthfully as you can and you go to places that you need to to do that And I find walking, it's the rhythm of, you know, like all those Thrapeutic things that have rhythm, drumming, EMDR, all those kind of things. Meditative but meditative. Yeah. Just walking is something I do pretty much every day. And that helps you decompress. Just walk it out. yeah So do you find it easy to leave characters behind to leave the you said, you know, the sort of amateur psychology and inh being all in, inhabiting that person? You know there must be people that Stick with you. Yes, I think there are. They are like friends, you know, they're sort of people you've got to know over your life dreams. they're like, you know, very strong memories. you have to a distance, you can't let them dictate your responses to your real life You know, you have you have to let them go and put them on the shelf and at a distance from them. Emily, you talked earlier about, you the beginning of your career, the pressure you put on yourself, not to have people at the SES proved right, you know, to they said, off you go on on your immoral way to kind of you know pursue this flibbity gibbet career and you wanted to, you know, be a person of substance and prove them wrong How have you continued to make the right choices as an actor? Because you know you have critical acclaim throughout your career, you haven't had the missteps that many other actors There's been one or two, but thankfully theyve they sink pretty quick. You've executed them elegantly, if there have been, not visible to my keen eye when I was looking back over your scV. I'd like to take credit for that path, but I get less and less sure of my kind of moral rectitude as I get older. I just think I've been lucky, I've been you do something that gets noticed in that way early on and There are still to this day I meet people filmmakers who say Breaking the ways is the reason I'm a director. It made me has a currency that's just lasted It's kept me in knickers, you know, for a very long time. Long mayay that continue. Let's have some more music shall we wasn't it? Your sevent choice today My husband said to me, Emily You cannot have Lee Morgan playing sidew though, because it's like asking Mozart a happy birthday. But we've already had Mozart, don't worry aboutllo. I just love this piece and If there is a version of my children that reflects the little girl that I was going to France with a Jacques tatty This is a moment I remember so clearly driving my kids in the car and listening to this. and My husband has he's always been a bringer of music into the house. And we've always listened to loads of different sorts of music and Jazz has been a big part of that classical you know, and then the kids have brought their own things in, but it's always a partart of our day in and family holidays just taking requests and listening to things. But I just remember this moment driving in the car and listening to this and the kids suddenly getting the idea of it being the soundtrack. The way to see London just going about their business and delight of being in a day when everybody's just, you know, the joy of small things The banal, easy just going about your business walking down the street in London to Lee Morgan inder. Lee Morgan and The Sidewinder Emily Watson, we've spent quite a lot of time looking back today at your career and your many successes. I wonder what you think that young dreamer, eleven year old Emily, who you described for us earlier, what would she make of it all I think she'd be delighted and quite surprised. I think she wanted to be a writer. But yeah, no, I think she'd be delighted You're now one of the more experienced actors on set. What advice do you give to younger artists who are starting out and following you in your footsteps? I know they ask you. Jessse Buckley was quite upfront, that You've given her great advice I'd say Bring your phone Don' bring your phone to set T set. Okay. I think sense of sitting around the fire, being with the best company in the world and you learn so much about being an actor but also about being a person. you know, how we or what you do relates to the world and It's like a Absolute gold dust that stuff And when mobile phones first started appearing There was a time where you got on set and you went and people you really respected were just gone. I call them the disappeared. There's now much more of a culture of don't bring your phone to set. and you know people are really realizing that it's an important part You don't get a two because it puts at least forty five minutes on your call in the morning try to cover it up the kind of practical advice. I love that combination. So we have the kind of philosophical. Perfect Well, you're going to a different campfire very soon. We're going to cast you away to your desert island. It's almost time Your career is taking you all over the world. how good are you at adjusting to a new place when you land somewhere? Well, I like to think that I'm quite good, but I'm not very good at the lonely of it I don't think. That's going to be the problem, the isolation. Okay. I like to jabber away and talk to people and you know, that's sort of very feeding for me What about the practical side? I mean, will you be able to fend for yourself, keep yourself alive, keep yourself warm and dry? I'll probably give myself food poisoning pretty quickly. Right. I think I'm pretty rubbish. Are you a good cook in real No? No. No meant I meant I cook a lot because you know you just do because of life. but I'm I'm very sad that my daughter describes her boyfriend's mom is a really good cook, which is always a bit of a okay, let's have a blow. That's a tough review Okay, so this isn't shaping up too well What kind of island are you hoping for? What are you imagining Oh, something balmy, breezy, warm seas, sort of Hawaiian. Maybe you're talking, that sounds better.. Okay, so so at least the vibe is going be good. Yeah. And a few cliff walks. Yes, absolutely. A bit of bluster. Definitely some bluster. All right, well, we'll let you take one more disc before we cast you away, Emily. What's your last choice today Okay, so this is Pace by the Citizens of the World Choir, which is a choir that I am a patron of. And when my kids were young I had it Music teacher who used to come to the house and when the DubbsS amendment failed to pass in Parliament, which was an attempt to bring unaccompanied minus into this country refugees She'd been working with Lord Roberts and He said, Let's start a choir And they started Then she knocked on my door and said, willill you be patron and I think at the time, my mum had recently died and my dad had adopted this principle of just say say yes to everything So I thought, I'm going to say yes to that And it's been the most incredible journey. That was ten years ago. And it's a choir made up of refugees and displaced people and allies. So it's sort of fifty, fifty people from here and people are not from here. And their brief is to sing Music from all around the world that's not religious. and they do a lot of kind of mash up of different cultural things. So there are fifty odd members of the choir from twenty six different countries around the world, kind of Ukrainian, Iranian, Afghanistan, all around the world and they sing stuff from you know and know their different cultures and To me, they are an incredible success story They're singing on Eon's latest album They've sung twice at Glastonbury. They sang with Guy Gari at their Platinum, Jubilee Palace concert They sang at Kofianan's Memorial. And hearing them sing is like taking a bath in the opposite of hate. just a beautiful thing And this is a song that was written for them by Felix Bxton of And H is a great supporter of the choir And yeah, this is one of their pieces that they are readying for refugee week this year. es We will sing Citizens of the World Choir with a Vula Malinga conducted by Becky Dell. So, Emily, Watson, the time's come. I'm going to cast you away to the desert Island. I'll give you the books to take with you. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book of your choice. What's it going be? It's Staying Alive, which is a poetry collection published by Bloodxebooks And why have you chosen it why' I think Poetry is in a way the most insightful If you were to take philosophy, film, art, everything and boil it down to its essence, poetry would be the most successful way to express it It's an expression of a human condition that is very potent And in a collection like that, you have very, very different views and expressions of that It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to take with you? Well it's kind of a massive cheat. No. I'm going to take the tape modern. Oh, okay It's not a cheap. Well There' plenty of plastes and restaurants and toilets. We'll be unmanned. You'll be the only one there. They'll do the cleaning. But they are yours. You can exactly you canust the paintings and the sculptures make sure everything's just perfect. Why have you chosen the tape model? I spend quite a lot of time there when I'm not working. I think being a creative person is a bit like having a dog and you have to take it for a walk every day and just going to see other people's attempts to the nature of life You know, you feel connected to yourself in some way doing that sometometimes you go and you think, o, I don't connect to that at all. don't understand it. and sometimes you have Mind blowing sense of the power of creativity and art You said that your kids are very creative. Did you take them there while they were growing up? Yeah, my daughter learned to walk in the tate actually. And the tate are not going to thank me for this, but we have a trick that we do that if you take a coin and you stand at the top of the slope in the main gallery You know, in the turbine in the turbine haul. Yeahah, if there's nothing on and you roll the coin from the top of you started off the top of the slope. If you're really lucky, it will go all the way down and right to the other end. Oh my goodness, best game ever. You're right, they're gonna to hate it, but what a brilliant game. Also we'll now know who the Data Island Dc's listeners are. Yeah'll bes caosing a riot Gathering with two peas. Ds, what a great luxury than you. More people should take galleries with them. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Emily? Would you save from the waves first if you needed to that I would take Fat Freddy's drop because it's about my person Emily Watson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island diss. It's my pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you Hello, it was lovely chatting to Emily and I hope she's very happy on her island, wandering around her gallery. There are more than two thousand programms in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast lots of other actors away over the years, including plenty of Emily's co stars. You'll find Hamlet's Jessse Buckley, the writer Maggieo Farrell, you'll also find Monica Dolan, her fellow BAFTA winning actor inappropriate Adult in there too You can hear their programs if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio managers for today's program were Sarah Hockley and Jackie Marjarin. The executive production coordinator was Susie Royls, the content editor was Mugabi Turia and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time, where my guest will be the motorcyclist and presenter, Guy Martin I'm Nol Tiththerich and for BBC Radio four from Shadow World This is impulsive What happens when someone's personality changes It was completely out of counter N never done it before, never done it since. And it's because of a prescription drug I asked myself, whyy would you do such a thing? What were you thinking? I've been uncovering the shocking side effects linked to medications called dopamine agonists For BBC radio four F Shadow World This is impulsive Subscribe to Shadow World. Imulsive now on BC sounds