Naomi Watts' new role in Netflix's Gypsy

Love and lust boil over into a midlife crisis for Naomi Watts in Gypsy, a dark psychological thriller about a married therapist who blurs the boundaries between personal and professional, writes Greg Kennedy

A handout photo of Naomi Watts in Gypsy Season 1 (Alison Cohen Rosa / Netflix) *** Local Caption *** al26ju-tv-gypsy.jpg

"First, do no harm" may be the oath taken by medical practitioners, but as a Manhattan therapist with a dark secret and scant respect for boundaries, Naomi Watts can hardly be held to her word in Gypsy, the new 10-part psychological thriller that has its premiere on Friday on Netflix.

As Jean Holloway, she lays bare her desires and obsessions in a way usually reserved for men, as she muddies her seemingly picturesque life by developing relationships with the people in her patients’ lives.

"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 (Billy Crudup, Spotlight) home alone wondering what's going on. Apparently having a great home life and a solid marriage isn't enough to dull the pangs of desire.

Two-time Oscar nominee Watts, 48, began her career in television in Australia with Hey Dad..! (1990), then starred in the United States 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. More-recent movies include 21 Grams (2003), King Kong (2005), The International (2009) and acclaimed tsunami-disaster film The Impossible (2012).

In addition to Watts, who is also on board as an executive producer, Gypsy stars Sophie Cookson (Kingsman) as rocker chick Sidney, Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express) as Jean's patient Allison and Karl Glusman (Nocturnal Animals) and another patient, Sam.

Behind the camera – keeping a tight focus on all the amoral and amorous entanglements, and shooting in a peeping 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, in this project written by Hollywood newcomer Lisa Rubin.

"I really wanted to examine honestly what it looks like to follow the path that leads to become 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?"

While there's no red room stocked with blindfolds and handcuffs, "there is an erotic nature to Gypsy", Taylor-Johnson recently told , "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 voiceover: "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 – mother to two boys, Sasha, 9, and Sammy, 8 – says she is focusing on her career at the moment, and not so much relationships or dating, after her breakup with 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 is available on Netflix from Friday.