Emma Watson:
Hermione's Last Stand
We chat with Emma on “Harry”, hair, college, kisses and dancing!
by Lynn Barker
 20-year-old Emma Watson has played studious, feisty Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film franchise since she was a fluffy-haired child. Now, as a sleek young college girl with a cute short haircut, the actress is moving on from the Potter series with a bit of sorrow, a lot of excitement and some great memories. She is sharing a few with us and clueing us in on her screen kiss in “Deathly Hallows Part 1” with Dan Radcliffe, which he has praised bigtime, to her challenges in these last Potter films and her plans for her new life. All hail Hermione!
AGW: You are everywhere in the media with your new cute haircut!
Emma: So I’m told. I just got out of bed so I’m kind of still processing it all.
AGW: Okay, we have to get this out of the way. Dan has said that you’re quite a fiery kisser.
Emma: [laughing] So I hear. Journalists keep bringing this up. The scene obviously had to be something that would really disturb Ron and make him really jealous and upset so I think the kiss had to be passionate from Hermione’s end. I guess I should just take it as a compliment. I read “animal” somewhere. I said to him last night, ‘you’ve been telling everyone I pounced on you’. He said ‘I didn’t use those words’. I’m like ‘whatever, Dan’. He’s like ‘no, no! I gave you a ten for kissing’. ‘All right, as long as it’s positive’.
AGW: How do you handle all this media hype, like the stories on the kiss?
Emma: It’s experience. I’m twenty years old now and I was nine or ten when I went into my first press conference. It’s not worth it. It takes too much emotional energy to get upset every time something is written that you don’t want to see. You have to let it go. I would be a crazy person. Maybe I am a crazy person [she laughs]. But it took me a while to figure that one out. I would be lying if I said I never get upset. I still get upset but I don’t care quite too much. Things still get misquoted all the time.
AGW: These two guys are like your brothers at this point. It must have been awkward to have this more intimate thing going on in this film.
Emma: Yeah. It was horrible! [laughter]. I felt incredibly awkward. I don’t know but it looked good. I somehow managed to make it look realistic. I was proud of myself that I managed to power through and be professional.
AGW: Is there any scene in any of the films that you would like to go back and shoot as a different character?
Emma: Oooo, that’s interesting. Wow. I had a really good time playing the evil Hermione in Ron’s vision so I’d like to go back and play a bad guy.
AGW: Any fun at the premiere?
 Emma: I did have fun but I’m a little tired. It was great to hear positive reactions to the film. I was worried that people wouldn’t understand if they hadn’t seen the six films that came before but that hasn’t been the case. That’s great. The lovely thing about doing two back-to-back is we picked up a kind of rhythm and momentum and were really into the work and very in our characters and there was a real fluidity to what we were doing so I think that made a really good movie. The chaos of shooting two in a row made for great momentum.
AGW: How has your experience living in America for school been? Do you feel more like an American now?
Emma: It’s really weird. When the American press came in [to talk to me] I perked up and felt quite at home and was happy to hear the American accents whereas, normally, that would have felt really foreign but I was like ‘Aww, the American Press. Hello!’. It has become a second home for me and I do really love it. I’m very happy. I could very easily see myself splitting my time between New York and London.
AGW: Why did you choose the states over an English education?
Emma: For a number of reasons. A friend of mine when to University in the states and when he was telling me that he was able to study more than one subject at a time and it was much more open and broad, that really appealed to me and also, I’m much more anonymous in the states. I needed a change and a fresh start where I felt like I could go and really reinvent myself. That’s what Brown has been for me.
AGW: Do you still want an acting career then?
Emma: Oh, definitely and this film has given me a lot of confidence. I just did a movie called My Week with Marilyn with Eddie Redmayne and Michelle Williams and that went really well and I think I’ll keep acting. I’d like to make like one movie a year, especially until I’m done with Brown definitely because it’s really hard. It’s really exhausting trying to juggle the two. I’m missing two weeks of school because I’m here doing this.
AGW: How do you manage that?
Emma: You just have to be really organized with your time and I tell professors in advance that ‘I have to leave’ at a certain time and hope they’ll understand. I have to work hard to earn that kind of trust and respect that they allow me to do that. I have to show them that I’m a hard worker and take my studies seriously. Otherwise, they wouldn’t let me do it. So the beginning of the semester is all about me getting good grades so they’ll say ‘okay. You can go do whatever you have to do’.
AGW: Have you picked a major?
Emma: I chose History. I like modern history but I don’t know. I will have to choose a specific area at some point but not for a little while yet.
AGW: Can you talk about your dance sequence with Dan? Was it choreographed and did you teach him some moves?
Emma: As much as I love Dan, he’s not a naturally-gifted dancer [we laugh]. I think he knows but it was perfect for the scene. It was meant to look silly and spontaneous. I love to dance.
AGW: Can you talk about the amazing scene between Hermione and Bellatrix when she is writing “mudblood” on your arm. That was powerful and creepy.
Emma: Thank you very much. It was quite horrible. Helena said to me afterwards. ‘I really didn’t enjoy doing that’ but she really can get into that kind of evil stuff. I think she felt quite comfortable. But the mudblood idea was something Helena and I came up with. I thought it would be quite powerful to have something that the audience can physically see when she is doing a spell on me. We came up with mudblood and what Bellatrix’s handwriting would look like. We had a lot of fun with it. I did one take and David (Yates, the director) let the camera roll and left me there screaming. I think it was quite disturbing for the crew.
AGW: The film is more character-driven than the others. What did director David Yates have to do with that?
Emma: The thing about working with David Yates is you always hear this word ‘truth’ and finding the truth and it being honest and real. He really hates anything false. He wants it to be from the heart and I think that made me a better actress. Especially, at the very beginning, I was playing this big character Hermione and he said ‘just do it from here [her heart]. Just forget all that stuff and be honest’. That’s what I tried to do. I think that made a difference.
AGW: Do you think doing this film with mainly just Harry, you and Ron was refreshing?
Emma: You know it was so nice not having that whole infrastructure of the castle and the school year. As much as it’s been amazing to work with all the talent, it can become quite stilted having all these barriers in place. It’s nice for it to just be the three of us and about us and what we can give. I loved that.
AGW: Which of all the Ron/Hermione scenes in the series was your favorite to film?
 Emma: There’s the scene where we go off together to get the basilisk fang in [the second film] to destroy the horcrux and we go off on this adventure together. It’s kind of like a comedy act because it’s the first time you see Hermione and Ron in tune. They’re always offbeat and kind of clash and then, in this one scene we’re this real team and we’re really into it. That’s more of a comedy moment and Rupert’s a great comedic actor so we had a really good time wringing the humor out of everything we could.
AGW: Your beginning scene with Hermione’s parents was so emotional. Was that a challenge for you?
Emma: It was a challenge. Being from a family that’s been split up, I know what it’s like to walk away from coming in between two different families. It’s hard so I guess I used some of that.
AGW: When you see Hermione’s baby pictures in the scene, were those really your own baby pictures?
Emma: They were actually my baby pictures. There’s one with me with my favorite thing. I had this towel with bunny rabbit ears on it and there’s a picture of that. I didn’t know which ones they were going to use. They just asked my dad if they could have some pictures of me when I was a kid and he handed some over. It’s weird to see those pictures mixed in with these fake parents.
AGW: Did you feel that you really understood your characters completely by the end? Did you always say the dialogue you were given?
Emma: Well, by the end, Dan, Rupert and I were rewriting our dialogue. I would read something and immediately say ‘She wouldn’t say that’. And, luckily enough, after having played her for ten years, [the filmmakers] trusted in me enough to give me the freedom to do that. I don’t think I’ll ever have that chance again so it was nice.
AGW: Describe the emotion you felt at the end of the Potter series.
Emma: It’s hard for me to answer because I don’t know how I really feel about it. I’m still processing it. I have days when I feel relieved and days when I feel very sad because this took up my life, my home, all of my time. My life revolved around Harry Potter. That was the focal point of my existence. It’s exciting now that I have this time. I can accept other things. There were moments when I was making this that I was like ‘Gosh I wish I could go and do that’ or something would come up and now I have time to go and do different things. I swing like a pendulum back and forth between these different emotions.
photos copyright Warner Brothers Pictures, 2010 |
