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English actress Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, reflected on her audition experience for the part. Watson recently sat with podcaster Jay Shetty and candidly talked about many aspects of her life. The On Puropose podcast episode, which aired on September 24, marked Watson’s first in-depth interview in years.
In the interview, Jay Shetty asked the actress about her audition for the role. Emma Watson recalled that makers were searching schools for children to play Harry, Hermione, and Ron. She noted that she was among 12 students from her school who auditioned.
Watson added that she had a "weird weighted fated sense of destiny" when she first listened about the audition. The actress said she was already a fan of J.K. Rowling’s books, on which the Harry Potter films were based.
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The host then asked if she felt the role of Hermione was always destined for her.
"I always felt like Hermione was I knew I was never auditioning for anything else like I knew it was her. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. Something felt right about it," Emma Watson replied.
The BAFTA award winner shared that she had never acted professionaly before she auditioned for the role.
Further in her conversation, Watson credited her mother for successfully playing Hermione over the years. She highlighted that it was her mother who did everything possible for her living a normal life apart from shooting for Harry Potter.
"I will forever be in her debt... She fought tooth and nail. She was, like, on the phone for hours saying she has to sit for her exams. She has to go back. Like she needs to be here. She needs to have some parts of a normal childhood," the actress recalled.
Emma Watson recalled being recognized beyond her role as Hermione in Harry Potter
Jay Shetty asked the actress, who played Hermione in Harry Potter from 2001 to 2011, about the blurring lines between her character and her real self. On that note, Emma Watson recalled her UN speech on feminism and women's rights. She noted it was the first time she felt that people were appreciating her, not just what she played on screen.
"People started stopping me because of things that I had come from me and that I had said. It felt like a very significant transition for me because, for the first time, I felt like I could look someone in the eye and receive and accept something that they were saying because I felt like it actually had something to do with me and I wasn't just kind of like a custodian of something sacred," Watson recounted.
Emma Watson noted that although she always took her character very seriously, the interaction with people after her speech felt like a "direct transmission" from her.
The English actress told Shetty that during Harry Potter she developed an expectation that her colleagues would become like family and lifelong friends. However, Watson noted that her experience on other movie sets was "painful" in terms building friendships.
Emma Watson also spoke about her differences with J.K. Rowling, which stemmed from the author’s remarks on the trans community. In the interview, Watson said that despite their ideological differences, she still values Rowling.
