“From the very first take I just felt the energy from everyone, the movement, the sound and the rain; it all adds the spirit of the scene. So really I didn't have that much to do, because you are just in it and wrapped up in it, because it was so emotional.”
Now, less than 12 hours later, Naomi is still suffering from that very highly-charged scene. “I feel it today,” she says with a wince. “I feel very stiff and tired. I was very charged up by the end of the scene and it took me about four hours to go to sleep, so I've only had about four hours sleep.”
That remark is made without complaint. Naomi, like the rest of the all-star cast that includes Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell, was well aware that great effort on their part would be necessary to help Peter Jackson bring his dream project to the big screen.
Starring in King Kong, which is being acclaimed as THE movie event of the year, is the latest stage of Naomi's eventual career as she has gone from Australian soap star to Oscar nominee.
It was out in Australian – where she had moved when she was 14 – that Naomi was bitten by the acting bug. She appeared alongside Nicole Kidman in Flirting and her TV shows included Home and Away.
She flirted with screen success in Tank Girl but it wasn't till Mulholland Drive that Naomi really made her mark as a movie star. Since then she has gone on to star in two editions of horror smash hit The Ring and deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for 21 Grams.
Since she is clearly what Hollywood describes as 'hot' it was almost inevitable that Naomi should be cast in such a plum role. Interestingly she describes the casting process for this epic movie as being very straightforward and low key.
“I got a call that they were interested in me. I was in Europe at the time and they were mixing the thirdLord of the Rings movie, and so we met for dinner in London. We spoke a little bit about the project but mostly it was a social evening,” says Naomi.
“It felt fantastic to be offered the part, I had never done one of these movies, and I had never done an event movie. People think that I must not like them because a lot of my choices have been a bit more obscure, but I do love these movies if they are done well.”
Fay Wray, who was Ann Darrow in the original version of King Kong, has been quoted as complaining of being typecast by that movie. So did Naomi have any doubts afterwards? She thinks for a moment before answering in the affirmative. “Well, yeah, I always have second thoughts about everything,” she says.
“Even when I am filming, I'm thinking… 'Oh my god am I going to be able to do this?' I think, hopefully, the difference is that I've done a lot of different work before this film and I won't be this girl forever. And I'll go right back and do something different again.”
In King Kong Naomi plays a struggling actress and Naomi concedes that battling to make it in the movie world is something of which she's had first hand experience. “Sure, I know what it is to struggle,” she says with a nod. “But the struggle that Ann Darrow has, in this version in particular, is nothing near to my tiny little thing. It was a ten year uphill struggle and those things definitely inform you, the rejection, but hers is much more extreme.”
Inevitably, Naomi says that she was attracted to the idea of appearing in a movie about the world's most famous giant ape because it offered an opportunity to work with Peter Jackson.