Naomi Watts says the ending of The Watcher was kept a secret from cast

We all love the suspense of guessing how a crime series will end. And when it comes to new show The Watcher, the cast were left wondering that too.

The new Netflix series, from the creator of American Horror Story and Dahmer, Ryan Murphy, follows a family who move into their dream home in New Jersey.

Only it isn’t long before they start getting harassed by a creepy stalker aka 'The Watcher’, who sends them a string of letters and sinister threats.

But despite the series being based on a true story, the cast were kept in the dark about how the show would end.

Netflix

And Naomi Watts, who stars in the drama, said 'just not knowing' was what she found must challenging about taking on her role.

“We were also trying to piece the story together in real time as we were making it. And so [there was] lots of mystery for us,” she told Digital Spy.

The King Kong actress said the cast weren’t given the scripts for the whole show straight away so they had to try and piece together what was going to happen.

But she said this just added to the 'excitement' of it.

“It wasn’t a bad thing. It was just a piece of the experience that made it more mysterious and more fun, I suppose,” she added.

Speaking to Decider she also said: “We were getting the scripts just one at a time, so we couldn’t tip off if we were the Watcher if we wanted to cause we didn’t know.

"But it ended up being this huge advantage, I thought, because we were in real-time and you could just sort of play.”

She added: “You’re getting information so slowly that you could actually play a real person and then do Ryan’s brilliant dialogue.

Netflix

“They gave me a really cool part. There was a lot to play, and I like that I was guessing. We’re all written as complicated people.”

Watts said the scripts were all the more important as they also had to rely on them to build their characters rather than speaking to the people who were involved in the real-life story.

Although they did read up on what happened at the time too, but didn’t have much to go by.

Her co-star Bobby Cannavale added: "The only source for any of that story is that one piece in New York Magazine. That’s it.

“My thing is just being faithful to whatever the script is, whatever the person who created this story that we’re trying to tell, and not so much faithful to the actual story.”

But while the show is based on true events, and does have a twist at the end, to this day no one knows who The Watcher actually is.

Topics: TV and Film, Netflix, True Crime

Anna Verdon