During the 20th Anniversary Special screened on New Year’s Day, 2022, the now-adult stars of the Harry Potter movies opened up about their struggles with fame as children and teenagers while making the multi-billion dollar franchise.
Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Tom Felton also acknowledged that it was even harder for Emma Watson – as the only girl and the youngest amongst the main stars. “People definitely forget what she took on and how gracefully she did it,” Tom Felton said about Watson’s superstardom, via People. Felton said that he had his “cronies” and Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint had each other to lean on during their rise to fame, but Watson was “not only younger, but she was by herself.”
“We never talked about it on the film because we were all just kids,” Radcliffe said. “As a 14-year-old boy, I was never going to turn around to another 14-year-old and be like, ‘Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay?'” Regarding the fame, Watson said; “I think I was scared…it got to a tipping point where you were like, ‘This is kind of forever now.'”
Like his costar, Grint admitted that he also had thoughts about leaving the franchise. “I had moments like that kind of all the way through,” he told Watson. “I also had similar feelings to Emma kind of contemplating what life would be like if I called it a day, but we never really spoke about it. I guess we were just kind of going through it at our own pace. We were kind of in the moment at the time. It just didn’t really occur to us that we were all having similar feelings.” Watson added; “The fame thing had finally hit home in a big way.”
In a 2013 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer David Heyman said; “Emma [Watson], in particular, was quite academic and was very keen in [the] pursuit of schooling and was wrestling a little bit more than the others. So each time there was a negotiation, it was not about a financial [matter], it really was about, ‘Do I want to be a part of this?’ We had to be sensitive to her needs and how important school was to her. And you have to listen. In our position, you’re not dictating, you’re listening. I deeply respected her, encouraged her. She’s very smart, always was, and fiercely intelligent.” Watson would go onto attend Brown University.
Check out our guide to best Harry Potter characters, ranked.