Naomi Watts talks menopause: “Women grin and bear it”
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Actor Naomi Watts went through early menopause at 36. She was experiencing symptoms she couldn’t explain, like itchy skin, night sweats, and anxiety, but struggled to find any real information or stories about this midlife transition.
In this chat with Fearne, Naomi explains why she’s become passionate about shining a spotlight on previously taboo topics like fertility, menopause, and sex. She talks about how it felt to be told she was peri-menopausal while she was in the middle of her fertility journey, and how she’s changed her lifestyle to help manage her symptoms.
Fearne and Naomi chat about the way women are told that simply being a woman means you have to suffer and your body will be a place of pain. How can we re-write the narrative to celebrate the beauty of our bodies and cycles?
Plus, how to fight back against the ingrained idea that older women aren’t of great use or value to society...
Naomi’s book, Dare I Say It, is published by Happy Place Books and it’s out now.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Fern Cosson and this is Happy Place, the show that knows there's great comfort in seeing yourself reflected in other people's stories. |
| 0:09.1 | Today, I'm chatting to Naomi Watts. |
| 0:12.2 | As a woman in Perry or menopause, it's going to lead to a whole lot of other things like anxiety, depression, memory blips, you know, in the most inconvenient ways. |
| 0:21.7 | You can be standing in front of a boardroom of men holding a meeting and suddenly you've |
| 0:26.9 | lost the word or the sentence has gone. |
| 0:29.8 | You know, it's very humiliating and can create a whole lot of anxiety. |
| 0:34.7 | And so half the population is going to go through this. |
| 0:38.4 | The chances are this story, my my story might be your story too gang how are you i'm hanging out my ass i'm not going to |
| 0:45.7 | lie my kids have been sort of tag teaming illness for about 10 days i know loads of you are going |
| 0:52.5 | through the same thing bugs galore going around everywhere. |
| 0:56.8 | I had my daughter in the bed of me last night, quite literally coughing up flam in bed, which was |
| 1:01.2 | delightful. I don't think I've had a solid night's sleep in two weeks. So I'm a bit delirious, |
| 1:08.5 | powered by coffee and a lot of chocolate buttons at the moment. |
| 1:13.5 | That is my snack of choice. |
| 1:15.1 | But whatever it takes to get you through, right? |
| 1:17.9 | I think we're coming out the other side. |
| 1:19.4 | They both went back into school today. |
| 1:21.4 | And I did do a little skip after the school run because I was so joyful and relieved. If you're in the same boat, |
| 1:32.3 | you've got this. God, it's bloody hard. The juggle is real. Let's talk about Naomi Watts, |
| 1:36.7 | who is a legend. You'll know Naomi from films like The Ring, Birdman, King Kong. But what you |
| 1:43.5 | might not know is that at 36, at the height of her |
| 1:46.4 | fame, she suddenly started experiencing symptoms she couldn't explain. Itchy skin, night sweats, |
... |
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