2 hours ago
2
Harry Potter star Emma Watson has said she will still “cherish” her previous relationship with JK Rowling, despite their more recent rift over transgender rights.
The actor had previously attacked the author for the latter’s gender critical beliefs, responding to Rowling’s essay about the need for single-sex spaces due to the threat of violence against women, by tweeting: “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.”
Rowling has since responded by saying that she would “never forgive” either Watson or co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint for having “cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights”.
Speaking to Jay Shetty on his podcast earlier in the week, Watson appeared conciliatory, saying:
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, mean that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with.
“I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish. To come back to our earlier thing – I just don’t think these things are either/or. I think 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.”
Watson went on to say she believed that a dialogue over the debate with Rowling was not permitted, adding: “I think the thing I’m most upset about is that a conversation was never made possible.”
The three lead actors in the movie series reunited for the 20th anniversary of the first film in 2021, but Rowling was absent. She serves as executive producer on HBO’s upcoming TV adaptation.
Speaking to Shetty, Watson reflected with affection on her years working on Harry Potter, saying that it was sufficiently collegiate as to have given her unrealistic expectations about future jobs.
“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.
“I came to work looking for friendship, and 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. They’re looking for, this is my chance, this is my role, this is what I want out of it. I’m focused, this is my job, this is my career. Like, let’s go. And I was not of that mindset. And so 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. Like we, we really were. And so I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces. And I just got my ass kicked. I really did. It, yeah, it broke me.”
Although not officially retired from acting, Watson, 35, is currently studying for a postgraduate degree in creative writing at Oxford University. In an interview with Hollywood Authentic earlier this week, she expanded on her hiatus from the profession, saying that while she enjoyed performing, “I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying. But I do very much miss using my skill-set, and I very much miss the art. I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed.”
