Family therapy with Kai Schreiber and Naomi Watts

Taken from the spring 26 issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

A year to the day since David Lynch passed away, Naomi Watts, the actor whose career was supercharged by the auteur’s mind-bending Mulholland Drive (2001), joins me for a video call from her home in Manhattan. Behind the 57-year-old are a smattering of books and a wall of family photos. To her right, perched in a gaming chair, is daughter Kai Schreiber. She’s a 17-year-old model who made her runway debut for Alessandro Michele’s Valentino show in March 2025 and then, last July, walked for Michael Rider’s first show at Celine.

The pair have recently returned from a trip to London, where they shot this cover story dressed in Demna’s inaugural Gucci collection – a luxe eveningwear offering inspired by a famiglia of Gucci archetypes (La Contessa, Sciura, La Diva, L’Influencer, etc).

Fitting, given that Naomi and Kai are, together, an exemplar of the modern famous family. Beyond Mulholland Drive, you might remember Naomi as the meddling journo in the terrifying 2002 horror remake The Ring, or from 2012’s nerve-shredding family survival The Impossible, where she plays a mother battling to find her family after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. She’s an indie It-woman, too, appearing in John Curran’s We Don’t Live Here Anymore and David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees (both 2004). And she’s currently lighting up TV screens as a fabulously imperious Jackie Kennedy Onassis in Love Story, Disney+’s drama about the doomed romance between John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette.

And then there’s Kai, a proudly trans It-girl who still finds her parents embarrassing and is serious about her knowledge of fashion history, from ​’90s trans legend and Mugler muse Connie Fleming to Alexander McQueen’s SS01 show, Voss. ​“She’s a bit like Chloë Sevigny,” says Naomi proudly. ​“She just knows what’s what.”

Naomi speaks in a kind tone, with an accent that sounds only loosely Australian (she was born in Kent but spent large portions of her youth in Anglesey, Wales before moving to Sydney, aged 14). Kai has a mousy ponytail a slight frame and, straight after this interview, will be cramming in a last-minute study session before her weekend begins. ​“I definitely see modelling being a huge thing in my life for a long time,” she says.

In this, their first cover-story interview, a sometimes charming, sometimes bashful mother-daughter dynamic plays out in what feels like a raw, borderline therapeutic conversation, free from any press-trained fluff. But don’t worry, Naomi and Kai, the first session is free…

Hey guys, thanks for sitting down with us. How’s life?

Kai: [laughing] Life is good. Naomi day. We’ve got the whole weekend ahead. It’s freezing cold in New York City. I just got home. I’m filming at the moment in Montreal, going back and forth.

What are you shooting?

Naomi: A very small movie called Mother Courage, directed by Cody Fern, an actor – turned-director.

How did you find your FACE cover shoot?

KS: It was definitely one of the most fun shoots that I’ve done. The set was beautiful. It was a lot of fun, especially to work with my mom.

NW: Thanks, darling. Yeah, the photographer [Oliver Hadlee Pearch] really came with a distinct vision, and that’s very much wrapped up in how Demna is putting Gucci forward: family but with an edge. Kai just knows how to hold herself in any clothing. Any outfit, she tells a story the minute it goes on. There was real excitement for a lot of reasons: THE FACE being such a huge part of my youth, and now it’s come full circle. My mum introduced the magazine to me and my brother when we were living in England, and it sort of set the tone for our childhoods.

Kai, your first job was technically in fashion, working at a boho boutique in Montauk, Long Island, where you guys go on holiday. What happened between that and your first major job walking for Valentino?

KS: Modelling was always a fantasy of mine, but I was never really sure if it was going to become a real thing. Not that I was doubting myself or anything – it just felt like something that was so unattainable. We started talking about it more because I was getting taller, having meetings with IMG [Models] and making plans.

When did each of your relationships with Gucci and Demna start?

NW: When Demna was at Balenciaga, I went to the shows. I’ve gone to the Met Gala with him, and I just really love his eye. But Kai is the one who knows more about fashion than me. I just go: ​“Oh, that’ll work on my frame.” Kai is a visionary. I don’t know how to explain it, but she studies it. I think that in our initial meeting at IMG, she really blew everyone away. I mean, first of all, a 16-year-old sitting down with five people in a room and having a meeting… They were already interested based on pictures and a video of her walk. But she spoke to fashion – sorry if I’m embarrassing [you], Kai – with real authority. Do you want to say [more]?

KS: [shakes head]

NW: No? OK. I think when someone is not only the right look, but they actually have knowledge and passion, it’s a whole package.

Kai, how do you find modelling?

KS: The main thing I’ve always enjoyed about it is that you get the chance to display someone’s creativity and hard work. And, most of the time, you’re the first person to ever wear this dress. You’re what the dress was designed for. You’re the muse, the vision.

You’ve also walked for Celine. How was that experience?

KS: It was Michael Rider’s debut. That was fun, my second show ever. I loved the location and the collection overall. Michael and everyone on the team were really sweet. And they let me keep a bag.

NW: [smiling] Yeah, that was major. Those bags weren’t even launched at that point.

Naomi, before you became an actor, you gave modelling a shot in Japan, worked as a wardrobe assistant and then as an assistant fashion editor [at Follow Me, an Australian magazine similar to Harper’s Bazaar]. Is it strange seeing Kai blow up in the fashion industry?

NW: No. I was on track for a fashion career because I started so young as a fashion assistant. I was a fashion editor at 19. I loved it and had great contacts, but it wasn’t my love. I only discovered that because I got pulled into acting by a friend to do this bizarre drama class over a weekend. On the Monday after, I quit my job. Everyone was like: ​“You’re crazy. You have a future [in fashion].” But I didn’t have anything to do with Kai going after fashion, that was just her. Kai was a trained dancer, and I think it was clear that she knows how to walk, move and tell stories.

Who inspires you as a model, Kai?

KS: I think [Scottish model] Ivy Stewart is killing it, 100 per cent. I just watched her walk Dsquared2 and she tore. Connie Fleming and the OGs – like the ​’90s Mugler [girls]. Everyone’s killing it. All the girls are killing it.

Alex Consani, Colin Jones…

KS: Yeah, love them.

Are the girls supportive of one another?

KS: I think that there’s a huge misconception about people in fashion – especially models. I don’t know why or where it was started, but everyone’s just like: ​“Oh yeah, models are b‑words who are mean and give you nasty stares.” But it’s not like that. I feel like the girls are really supportive. Backstage, everyone’s hyping each other up. It’s not like you’re sitting in a corner being judgy.

Naomi, it’s exactly a year since David Lynch passed. Have you been reflecting on this?

NW: Yeah, he was a major mentor to me, and a friend. He changed my life, took a real chance on me. [Before Mulholland Drive] I was really an actor for hire, and very much living under the radar, job to job, just covering my expenses and thinking about packing it in. The jobs that I was getting wouldn’t end up being good films or shows. [When] I finally got in that room with him, we clicked, and he gave me this amazing part. That film is still being played in colleges. In fact, I went to my son’s [Sasha Schreiber] college, the University of Southern California, the other day to speak to the film students about it with the editor [Mary Sweeney, who was briefly married to Lynch and worked with him for around 20 years on Mulholland Drive and also Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Inland Empire in various capacities]. I miss him deeply. There’s really no one like him. He knew how to address darkness, but found a way to feel the light.

Kai, did you ever meet David?

KS: No.

Have you watched any of his films?

KS: [shakes head]

NW: Don’t feel bad about that. There’s plenty of time, and those films are not really for a young mind.

KS: Well, I definitely want to watch Twin Peaks and obviously Mulholland Drive.

NW: Yeah, but save it. I’ve tried to steer them away from watching anything that I’m in. I made the terrible mistake of…

KS: The Ring!

NW: Well, no, you watched that of your own volition, but I remember showing them the trailer for King Kong.

KS: [laughs]

NW: They were far too young. Even in the trailer alone, there’s enough violence: me being scooped up and thrown around, clearly in danger. I remember you getting quite freaked out by it.

KS: Yeah, I remember.

NW: I just thought, actually, there’s no advantage to your kids seeing you in movies. Just wait till they seek them out.

Kai, when you were little, you used to write a lot. Is that something that you’re still into?

KS: Yeah, English is definitely my favourite class in school. I’ve always loved writing, especially creative writing. I only like to write when it’s self-constructed and I can do whatever I want.

What are you like at school?

KS: To be honest, it switches so intensely. There are some days where I really don’t feel the need to say anything all day. Like, I could go the whole day sitting in silence with my headphones in. Then there are other days where I want to talk and hang out with everybody. Either I’m at 100 per cent or just doing my own thing.

Do you guys clash or largely agree on things?

NW: Do you want to answer that first?

KS: No, you go.

NW: I think we have a healthy relationship, seeing eye to eye on things. There are moments where we’re just a textbook mother and teenage daughter – like, everything I say and do is annoying to her. It’s an interesting time, isn’t it? It’s a parent’s job to let go, although we’re filled with grief about that. You just want to make sure they’re OK as they sort of push you out of the way, experiment and launch themselves into their own independence.

What things do you definitely not agree on?

NW: Hair colour.

KS: We don’t agree on music, really.

NW: No, I kind of like your music! I just don’t have knowledge of [cultural] currency. I like what I like, and that sort of formed when I was about your age. I’m obsessed with David Bowie, and he never left my mind.

Kai, what music are you into at the moment?

KS: Ethel Cain, Charli xcx, Bassvictim.

If you could walk in one old fashion show from the past, what would it have been?

KS: The Alexander McQueen Voss show. Such a cool show. I like how weird and eerie it is. It almost makes you uncomfortable. That’s what McQueen does.

NW: Who was in the show?

KS: Kate Moss…

NW :Shalom [Harlow]?

KS: I don’t know if Shalom was in it. [Naomi is thinking of the SS99 McQueen show No. 13 finale, where Shalom was spraypainted by robots as she was rotated on a plinth – Fashion Ed] But what’s her name? Scarlett’s [White] mom, what’s her name?

NW: Oh, Karen Elson.

KS: Yeah, all those girls, they had thorns in their mouths. And the woman in the centre – I can’t remember her name[journalist and fetish party maven Michelle Olley – Voss Boss Ed]. This naked woman with [dead] moths [glued all over her body, plus live ones flying around the glass box before the sides are smashed].

What’s it like seeing Kai do so well, Naomi?

NW: I’m both excited and a little nervous. We’re going slow and being careful. You know, I started working, trying to model and do commercials and stuff, at a very young age. We definitely protect our kids much more these days. But we felt good about supporting her exploration of modelling on the early side. With the trans community being under attack, it felt like a meaningful way for her to express pride. This is an industry that has long celebrated and supported the community.

Any words of wisdom for Kai?

NW Follow your dreams. I think Kai’s dreams are pure.

Smiling, Kai listens to her mum and leaves the conversation – following her dreams, and also the need to finish some homework…

HAIR Franziska Presche at The Good Company Reps MAKEUP Mel Arter at Julian Watson Agency MANICURIST Veronica Butenko SET DESIGNER Andrew Tomlinson at Streeters PRODUCTION Partner Films EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Cara Gillies PRODUCER Chloe Stevens PRODUCTION MANAGER Abbie Cockerell PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS Albi Gualtieri, Thomas Lombard, Daiki Tajima and Stefan Turner-Powell STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS Enrica Miller and Valeriia Perehontseva HAIR ASSISTANT Masaki Kameda MAKEUP ASSISTANT Tina Khatri SET DESIGNER’S ASSISTANT Brad Barret PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Hannah Buckler PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Sarah Nimmo and Billy Barber Cruz