Arséma Thomas joked that the reason she hadn’t fixed her late father’s watch is because she feared what could be inside of it. (She knew from watching James Bond movies with her dad that the secret service agent’s timepieces could be explosive.)
“We always used to think that he was in the C.I.A.,” said Ms. Thomas, who stars in Hulu’s “She Taught Love” and co-stars on “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” of her father. He in fact worked at the United Nations, spoke seven languages and was also a professor.
Ms. Thomas’s father was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease known as A.L.S., when he passed down his favorite watch to her as she prepared to graduate high school.
Four years later, Ms. Thomas wore that watch while graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ms. Thomas talked about the watch and the confidence she feels every time she wears it. This interview has been condensed and edited.
Talk to me about this piece of jewelry that means so much to you.
So the piece of jewelry is a watch that my dad gave me. It’s silver with a leather band. It’s a piece of art. It has the three little other small watches at the bottom that tell seconds, milliseconds. And I think, because it’s broken, you can hear the minute and hand watch dangle as you swing your hand. So it feels almost musical as well. Especially moments when I’m nervous, I can center in on that.
When did he give the watch to you? What was the occasion?
He gave it to me right after I graduated high school. And he usually never trusts me with expensive pieces, because I am the most careless individual. But it’s his favorite watch. And it’s so strange, because I think the reason I love it so much is the fact that he gave it to me, and then we did this cross-country road trip while he drove me from my high school in Pennsylvania. We drove from the eastern side of Pennsylvania all the way to the western side. I felt like he had trusted me in that moment to be like, “I’ve done everything, and you can now go off.” And it was when he started to get sick with A.L.S.
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