No one can imagine someone else playing Hermione Granger, but Emma Watson reveals she had reached a point where she was considering leaving the role. During HBO Max’s upcoming Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts special, the cast and, the director discussed how Watson considered leaving the franchise.
Director David Yates discussed how Watson, now 31, contemplated leaving the franchise around the time he signed on to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. While Tom Felton said about Watson’s superstardom, “People definitely forget what she took on and how gracefully she did it.”
Tom Felton noted that while he had his mates and Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint had each other to lean on during their rise to fame, Watson was “not only younger but, she was by herself.” “We never talked about it on the film because we were all just kids,” Daniel Radcliffe added. Radcliffe continues, “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?'”
While Watson recalled rereading a diary entry from that time of her life where she felt especially lonely. “I think I was scared,” Watson told Grint. “I don’t know if you ever felt like 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.
Rupert Grint continues, “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.” “The fame thing had finally hit home in a big way,” Watson added.
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