Vincent Ward Denies Samantha Morton’s Emily Watson Claim

Filmmaker Vincent Ward has spoken out in response to comments made by The Odyssey star Samantha Morton during a recent interview.

Vincent came up in the conversation when Samantha sat down with the podcast Happy, Sad, Confused, after she was asked if she’s ever been mistaken for any other actors.

“Oh, it’s not mistaken,” she responded. “I went to New Zealand to do a movie and the director said, ‘We’re so excited to have you, Emily. I’ve loved you since you were in Breaking The Waves’.”

Host Josh Horowitz then asked whether she was referring to Vincent Ward, who directed her in River Queen, which she then confirmed to be the case.

“I was like, ‘Are you joking?’,” she continued. “I said to the producer, ‘Does he know that I’m Samantha Morton?’. He said, ‘Don’t tell him. He thinks you’re Emily Watson’.”

Samantha claimed that the project was, overall, a “sad job” that left her pondering “what the…?”, as well as alleging that she never corrected the director for his supposed faux pas.

The Oscar nominee concluded: “So, I always get mistaken for the amazing, the one and only, extraordinary Emily Watson. Or Stella McCartney.”

Vincent has since told Entertainment Weekly that Samantha’s claims are not possibly true because of how much he admired her work at that time.

“In fact, I had admired her work in a range of films including Minority Report, In America, and others,” he stated. “She is a very unique performer, it would be impossible to confuse her for anyone else, and I had pushed very hard to have her in the film even though it caused us some challenges.”

HuffPost UK has contacted Samantha Morton’s team for comment.

Samantha and her supposed doppelganger Emily Watson have shared the screen only once, in Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 surreal psychological drama Synecdoche, New York.

In recent weeks, she has already found herself at the centre of Oscar buzz thanks to her scene-stealing work as Circe in The Odyssey.