Six years have passed since Emma Watson last appeared in a film, and nearly 15 years have passed since the Harry Potter film franchise concluded. In that time, the actress has ruminated on her relationship with it from the perspective gained with distance. During a recent appearance on On Purpose With Jay Shetty, the actress explained how she’s made space to still value Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling despite having been publicly denounced, alongside Daniel Radcliffe, by the author for standing against her anti-trans stance.
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience, and holding the love and support and views that I have, means that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with,” Watson said. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish. I just don’t think these things are either/or.”
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She added: “It’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with. And I think that’s a very, very important way for me that I need to be able to move through life. … I guess where I’ve landed is it’s not so much what we say or what we believe, but very often how we say it. That’s really important and that’s really frustrating and not what you want to hear when you’re really angry and upset with someone.”
Watson explained that she doesn’t want to perpetuate the idea “of throwing out people or that people are disposable,” and she keeps the door open to reconnect with Rowling primarily because “a conversation was never made possible.” Until then, she’s being careful about how she discusses the matter publicly. “I just don’t want to say anything that continues to weaponize a really like toxic debate and conversation,” she added. “It is why I don’t comment or continue to comment. Not because I don’t care about her or about the issue, but because the way that the conversation is being had feels really painful to me.”
Radcliffe’s response to Rowling saying she would never forgive him and Watson was similar. “It makes me really sad, ultimately,” Radcliffe said last year. “I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”
He added: “I’d worked with the Trevor Project for 12 years and it would have seemed like, I don’t know, immense cowardice to me to not say something. I wanted to try and help people that had been negatively affected by the comments. And to say that if those are Jo’s views, then they are not the views of everybody associated with the Potter franchise … I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people.”
Watson learned to take the good with the bad after Harry Potter, too. When she ventured into other roles, she was surprised to see that it wasn’t as community-based as the beloved franchise she’d spent a decade of her life making.
I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I think I had developed on Harry Potter, which was that we were, the people I worked with were going to be my family, and that we were going to be lifelong friends,” she said. “That was a very painful experience for me outside of Harry Potter and in Hollywood, like, bone breaking, really painful, because most people don’t come to those environments looking for friendships … I found, the rejection really painful. I think it was so unusual to make a set of films for 12 years and we were a community. I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces and I just got my ass kicked. I really did. It broke me.”
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