- Out January 27, Penguin Bloom is new movie on Netflix starring Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln.
- Penguin Bloom tells the true story of Sam Bloom, a mother-of-three who was gravely injured during an accident in Thailand.
- Stars Naomi Watts and Andrew Lincoln worked with the real-life couple for the film. In fact, it was filmed in their house.
Naomi Watts has a knack for playing resilient, real-life women dealing with the aftermath of disaster. In 2013, Watts starred in The Impossible, a harrowing movie about a family caught in the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. With the Netflix movie Penguin Bloom, out January 27, Watts plays Sam Bloom, a mother-of-three who is paralyzed after a freak accident—also in Thailand.
Penguin Bloom, which Watts produced alongside Reese Witherspoon, begins with the moment that changed Sam Bloom's life forever. In 2013, Bloom, her husband Cameron, and their three sons traveled to a remote village in the Gulf of Thailand for a vacation. The day after arriving from Australia, Bloom leaned onto the barrier of her hotel's observation deck to survey the view from above.
And then she fell through the balcony, crashing onto the tiles 40 feet below. In a personal essay for Time, Bloom explained that the Royal Thai Police investigation found the 15-year-old barrier to be "rotten" and "criminally neglected."
Bloom was gravely wounded in the aftermath. She suffered a fractured scull, a bruised and bleeding brain, ruptured lungs, and two spinal injuries with long-term consequences. Her spine was shattered at the T6 and T7 vertebrae, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. "Thankfully, I have absolutely no recollection of this horror," Bloom wrote.
Once an avid surfer and adventurer, Bloom was now confined to a wheelchair. Suddenly, Bloom wrote for Time, she felt like a stranger in her own life. "Our house wasn’t how I remembered it, and in my mind, it wasn’t my home anymore. It wasn’t the precious nest I’d made for my three babies. When viewed from a wheelchair, the once-familiar sanctuary of love and comfort became an alien landscape strewn with obstacles. Nothing felt right; I didn’t feel like I belonged anymore," she wrote.
Here's where the title of the movie, Penguin Bloom, comes in. As Bloom struggled to adjust to the new normal, her son Noah took in a wounded magpie chick that he named Penguin for its black-and-white coloring. Magpies, per Brittanica, are considered some of the most intelligent animals to exist—and are also prone to aggressively attacking humans. Speaking to NPR, Watts revealed that she once was attacked by a "whole flock" of magpies.
But Penguin the magpie did the opposite of wreak havoc on the Bloom family. Through taking care of the baby bird and watching her grow, the family bonded and Bloom found a new sense of purpose. Eventually, Cameron recorded the family's experiences in the book Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family, co-written with Bradley Trevor Greive.
Watts read the book and found it profoundly moving. “I read it on a Sunday morning with my kids in bed leafing through the pages and being completely drawn in by these beautiful images of this creature, this little tiny bird. I just felt really drawn in by this moment and I saw the magic of this bird creating the unity and the repair of one's hope," she told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hugh Stewart
Given how open the Blooms have been in sharing their story, it's no surprise that the real-life family was intimately involved in the creation of the movie based on their lives. In fact, the movie was filmed in the Blooms' actual house in Newport, New South Wales, Australia.
According to Watts, the house's gorgeous beachfront views were a source of pain for Bloom. "The beaches were her entire youth. Every imaginable water sport took place there. It was all a horrific reminder of what she couldn't exist in anymore," Watts said.
But eventually, Bloom did return to water sports. She took up competitive paracanoeing, per her website. She placed 13th in the world and won two Australian titles before representing her country at the 2015 World Championships in Italy. As a member of the Australian Adaptive Surf Team, she won Gold for Australia at both the 2019 and 2020 World Para Surfing Championships. "Getting back in to surfing has been a game changer for me. It’s meant I’ve been able to focus on what I can do instead of what I can’t and it’s brought a lot of happiness back to my life," Bloom wrote on Facebook.
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The real-life couple worked extensively with Watts and co-star Andrew Lincoln, who portrayed them onscreen. Watts was especially concerned with getting the role's physicality right. In addition to recording her movements as she exited her wheelchair, Bloom came to set to check Watts's work. "I trust your eye more than anyone's," Watts recalled telling Bloom on NPR.
Joel Pratley
More than anything, the Blooms wanted Penguin Bloom to be a story of love. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Lincoln recalled a conversation he had with Cameron, Bloom's husband, while they were out surfing. "The key thing I said [to Cameron] was, 'What do you want out of this film?' and he said 'I want them to get that we’re soul mates, that throughout this terrible trauma that it is ultimately a love story,'” he said.
As for Penguin's whereabouts? Two years after taking her in, the Blooms returned Penguin to the wild—but her role in the Bloom's family lives on. "We thought we were rescuing Penguin, but Penguin rescued us," Noah said on Mamamia. And since Australian magpies can live up to 25 to 30 years in the wild, we'd like to think Penguin is out there, still alive.
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