'First, do no harm" is the familiar oath taken by medical practitioners. But as a Manhattan therapist with a dark secret – and scant respect for professional boundaries – Naomi Watts can hardly be held to her word in Gypsy, a new 10-part psychological thriller available on Netflix from Friday.
She stars as Jean Holloway, whose desires and obsessions are laid bare in a way usually reserved for male characters, as she complicates her seemingly perfect life by developing relationships with the people in the lives of her patients.
“I play quite a bad woman – she’s definitely flawed,” says Watts. “We’ve seen this character played out with a male protagonist many times over but I think it’s not that common for a woman to be playing someone seeking power and control, but still having a lot of desire.”
As the borders of Jean’s professional life and personal wants blur, she descends into a world where the forces of desire and reality are disastrously at odds.
It hardly helps that whenever common sense dictates she should step on the brakes, she races ahead with nervy abandon, leaving her husband, Michael (Spotlight's Billy Crudup), home alone wondering what is going on.
A great home life and a solid marriage is not enough, it seems, to dull her pangs of desire.
Two-time Oscar nominee Watts, 48, began her acting career on television in Australia in Hey Dad..! (1990). She moved to the United States for a role on the short-lived NBC sci-fi series Sleepwalkers (1997), before her breakout role in David Lynch's neo-noir mystery film Mulholland Drive (2001) kicked her movie career into high gear. Subsequent movies include 21 Grams (2003), King Kong (2005), The International (2009) and acclaimed tsunami-disaster film The Impossible (2012).
She can currently be seen in the Twin Peaks TV sequel, which has reunited her with Lynch.
In addition to Watts, who is also an executive producer, Gypsy stars Sophie Cookson (Kingsman) as rock chick Sidney, Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express) as Jean's patient, Allison, and Karl Glusman (Nocturnal Animals) as another patient, Sam.
The series was written by Hollywood newcomer Lisa Rubin. Behind the camera – keeping a tight focus on all the amoral and amorous entanglements, and shooting in a peeping-Tom style that makes voyeurs of viewers – is a woman with an eye for this sort of thing, Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson.
"I really wanted to examine honestly what it looks like to follow the path that leads to becoming a wife and mother with a successful career, and to then find that these are now the things that define you," Rubin recently told The Guardian. "What about all the things that came before? Where do the desires you used to have go? And what happens if you stop suppressing the way you feel?"
"There is an erotic nature to Gypsy," Taylor-Johnson said, "but it's not at all in a similar way to Fifty Shades. It's about the character's power as a woman and how she uses it in her practice. It's complex".
As she sinks deeper into her unethical quagmire, even Jean confesses in a voice-over: “The more you watch someone, the more you realise we are never really who we say we are. In fact, hidden underneath, there’s always a secret. We might actually be someone else.
“I guess I’ve been living my life as two people. I don’t know which one is real ... I don’t know who’s in control anymore.”
In real life, Watts – a mother to two sons, Sasha, 9, and Sammy, 8 – says she is focusing on her career at the moment, not relationships or dating, after breaking up with actor Liev Schreiber last year after 11 years together.
But she is being picky selecting her projects.
“I’m here to tell the stories,” she says. “Not just to go to work and get paid by great actors and directors; it’s more than that. It has to be stuff that you’re connecting with, if it’s bringing something back into your own life. If it’s not growing me, then what’s the point?”
• Gypsy will be available on Netflix from Friday
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How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
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- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
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Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”
Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.”
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
