Jessica Watson confronts an ocean of emotion watching her own biopic

By Louise Rugendyke

Jessica Watson and Teagan Croft.Credit:Brook Mitchell

Jessica Watson is expert at brushing off any kind of gushing in her direction. Tell her it’s incredible she sailed around the world at 16 and she deflects.

“But anyone can,” she says.“It’s just a matter of having that right team, that right preparation. Everyone goes, ‘I couldn’t do that,’ but actually, it’s, ‘What are the things that I would need to be in place to make it possible?’”

The thing is, it’s hard not to gush after seeing True Spirit, the biopic that follows her unassisted, solo 2009-2010 circumnavigation. That’s 210 days alone at sea – and I can’t stress this enough – as a 16-year-old.

It’s not just me that’s gushing, though. Teagan Croft, who plays Watson in True Spirit, has some questions. So do members of the group who are on the True Spirit PR circuit who gather around Watson after our interview on the rooftop of Sydney’s Old Clare Hotel and pepper her lightly with more questions.

Jessica Watson coming through Sydney Heads about to cross the finish line after circumnavigation of the world in 2010.Credit:Dallas Kilponen

It’s not that Watson shies away from her mammoth achievements – she was named Young Australian of the Year in 2011, received an Order of Australia in 2012 and last year was inducted into the Sailing Australia Hall of Fame – but she’s spent the past 13 years answering questions about it.

“I’m so grateful for the things that enabled that, and the fun I had along the way – but I really want something separate and not just be that 16-year-old forever,” she says. “And that is still maddening [that people still think that way] and this is going to constantly bring people back to that again.

“So it’s amazing and it’s exciting, but it’s so important for me to have a career and a life. I’m a very, very different person now than I was at the time and people tend to forget that, I think.”

OK then, well, I might as well get three nosy parker questions out of the way first:

Did she get sick of any food on the trip? Not really but, “I did have very weird food habits. There was one week where all I felt like eating was tinned corn and chocolate. And no one stopped me.”

Did she really use a fork as a hairbrush? No, that bit was invented for the movie but Jesse Martin, who inspired Watson with his 1999 solo trip around the world, did use a fork. “I had a hairbrush,” she confirms.

True Spirit. Teagan Croft as Jessica Watson in True Spirit.

Did she celebrate her birthday on the boat (that one’s from my six-year-old)? No, she turned 17 three days after she returned home.

Now more of those questions are going to come again, as True Spirit gets a worldwide Netflix release and people are reminded in jaw-dropping detail (the waves!) of the scale of what Watson achieved.

The film is based on the 2010 book Watson wrote about the nearly 23,000-nautical-mile journey, called the “Mount Everest of sailing”, and it covers the early backlash against her plans (child welfare groups wanted her stopped), her dyslexia, the collision with a bulk carrier during a test run, as well as the joys – and mental toll – of the trip and the close relationship she has with her family.

It’s heartwarming, in the best kind of way, not too cheesy as these types of biopics can be, and a great reminder of the worldwide interest – and impact – there was in her journey.

Croft underwent stunt training to replicate being thrown around the boat during rough seas in True Spirit.

I cried at the end – and I don’t even like the ocean – so it must have been hard for Watson, who now works as a management consultant at Deloitte in Melbourne, the first time she saw it.

“It was super emotional,” she says. “And that was without finished music or CGI … even then, it was really, really powerful for me.”

Croft, who is sitting next to Watson, jumps in: “We were all crying,” she says. “It’s an emotionally charged film.”

Watson: “She re-created this chronically embarrassing crying scene that happened in real life. They re-created it right down to the scarf.”

Croft: “That must be a bit weird to see the scarf that you had on while crying and seeing someone else have it on and crying?”

Watson: “They should have asked me because I’ve got the real thing somewhere – it’s damp and frayed and mouldy.”

Watson, now 29, and Croft, 18, have great rapport and bounce off each other as they discuss the very meta situation they find themselves in – they are both Jessica Watson.

Croft and Watson in Sydney.Credit:Brook Mitchell

“It’s one of the weirdest dynamics in the world,” agrees Croft, who also stars in the HBO Max DC superheroes series Titans.

Watson, meanwhile, was confronted with seeing Croft with her hair when she visited the Gold Coast set.

“I keep getting this nostalgia for the thing that I didn’t do,” says Croft, laughing. “Like, I watch the boat and I go, ‘Oh, me and my boat.’ But it’s not me and it’s not my boat. And it’s so clear that it’s not me, or my boat, when Jess is sitting next to me in the theatre.”

It was Croft’s connection with the boat, Ella’s Pink Lady (the real vessel is at the Queensland Maritime Museum, a replica was built for the film) that Watson really appreciated, as Croft understood that Ella’s Pink Lady wasn’t just a boat, but a home.

“Pink is a character,” says Croft. “In sailing culture, they do personify their boats and I think when you’re a solo sailor in particular, you do develop a real connection, like a personal friendship, with the boat and you hear sailors call the boat ‘she’.

“But the most important thing about Pink is that she was the one who fought through it. When the boat’s getting battered, there’s only so much you, as a sailor, can do. And what the film really tries to show is how it was for Pink, she’s the one that really did it.”

Watson: “I think I had someone once try to say that to me, almost like an insult, ‘You know, it was the boat that got you there,’ and I was like, ‘Yes, yes it was!’ ”

Cliff Curtis as Ben Bryant and Croft as Jessica Watson in True Spirit. Bryant was Watson’s fictional mentor in the film.

True Spirit is directed by Sarah Spillane, who also wrote the script while isolated in a shack in the US, so she could better understand the loneliness Watson must have felt on her journey. She texted Watson throughout the writing, usually about technical sailing points, and while the film does fictionalise some parts of the story – Watson’s mentor in the film Ben (played by a terrific Cliff Curtis) is an amalgam of several people – Watson is pleased with the result.

“Some of those lines in the movie about being vulnerable but being strong really resonate so much for me now,” says Watson. “That’s something that’s really, really important to me currently. I didn’t expect that level [of emotion] in the movie.”

What helped when she was on the water, says Watson, was the video blog she kept of her journey. It was through that, that thousands connected with the ups and downs of her trip – from regular teenage concerns to how to deal with the mentally harrowing becalmed waters off Cape Horn.

“The blog became one of the great ways of coping,” says Watson. “And through thinking about how am I going to explain that I survived this or how am I going to explain sharing this along the way, that really helps to frame your thinking.”

The film was shot largely on the Gold Coast, on open water and in a 13,000-foot water tank, with a few days on Sydney Harbour for Watson’s homecoming. As well as the replica Ella’s Pink Lady, three interior boat sets were used in which Croft was flung around as they re-created the rough conditions.

“I was mainly throwing myself from side to side,” says Croft, laughing. “I did a lot of sailing training and quite a bit of stunt training. Those sequences were choreographed – left, right, hold and grab – so it was OK.

“And the sailing, I went from zero experience to being able to hold my own. In the blocking, when they were like, ‘OK, you’re gonna go over here,’ I had a personal responsibility to be like, ‘OK, and what will I be doing to make sure, just for me, personally, that there’s something real that I’m doing.’ It’s never just busy work.”

There was one rough day, however, shooting on the open ocean, that brought everyone – except for Spillane and the director of photography Danny Ruhlmann – undone.

“The entire rest of the crew was on a catamaran vomiting their eyes out,” recalls Croft.

Watson jumps in: “And to be clear, it was not a rough day.”

The Watson family in True Spirit (from left): Stacy Clausen as brother Tom, Bridget Webb as sister Emily, Cliff Curtis as mentor Ben Bryant, Anna Paquin as mum Julie, Josh Lawson as dad Roger and Vivien Turner as sister Hannah.

To re-create the Sydney Harbour homecoming – in which more than 75,000 people and a flotilla of ships, plus then prime minister Kevin Rudd, gathered to greet Watson – a yacht club sailed out to meet Croft.

“It was so nice to see the sailing community,” says Croft. “And because when you’re on a yacht, you get close to each other, so you can talk. So we were having chats and some of them would be so cheeky. I’m very new to skippering and I was steering the boat coming into the harbour for a lot of the shots – because, solo sailor, you can’t have a double – and some of them would cut me off.

“But it was so wonderful to sail into the harbour – and then back and then in and then back and then in again.”

Watson says her homecoming on May 15, 2010, still makes her emotional. “It was just extraordinary,” she says. “The sense of wow, this time it’s a real accomplishment, but then it just became something just so much more than me.”

Watson’s family features heavily in the film – with Anna Paquin and Josh Lawson playing her parents, Julie and Roger. The bond between Watson and her mother is shown to be strong, which Watson says echoes their real-life relationship.

“Mum was the person who really got this thing quite early on,” says Watson. “Whereas dad, which kind of comes across in the film – and that’s obviously not all true – he was a little bit more hesitant, understandably, which I think more parents can relate to.”

And now that her story is, once again, out there, is there anything in the movie Watson wishes was actually true?

“Well, I wish I did more singing and dancing,” says Watson, looking at Croft. “You looked like you had more fun there.”

True Spirit premieres on Netflix on February 3.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.

Most Viewed in Culture

Source: Read Full Article