Naomi Watts said co-starring with a live magpie in Penguin Bloom at first gave her the jitters. "That made me nervous. How do we get a performance out of a bird and, you know, magpies are famously not super friendly," she told a press conference for the family drama at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday.
Watts, who plays Sam Bloom, a real-life active mother in Australia who becomes paralyzed after a tragic accident, eventually took to her feathery co-stars, a collection of live birds that played an injured baby magpie named Penguin who helps heal a broken family. "They absolutely stole the scenes every day," she recalled, including early on in production. "On the first day, the bird was on my head, chirping away, and next thing you know.
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