[Version française]
We sat at her kitchen table while she generously indulged my curiosity and Perks geekdom. Her cat slinked around the chairs, her roommate introduced herself and served some banana bread they’d baked together. It felt sort of like a gals’ lunch, or something that sounds less like a yogurt commercial. Emma showed me her journals and we all watched her favorite TED talk. Even though she’s been interviewed thousands of times over the 12 years since the first Potter movie, nothing she said felt like a stock answer. Every word seemed carefully chosen, save for a few moments in which she let her thoughts carry her away, and then that was exciting in the way watching people think and seek and find is exciting. She also got almost as hyper as I did when we got to talking about Pretty Wild, and she threw her head back in laughter when she admitted to getting through final exams with the help of The Carrie Diaries.
My dad came by after a couple hours and we’d started saying our goodbyes when I spotted her record player. The needle rested next to Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and I couldn’t help thinking about what a turning point that album signified in Joni’s career and life. Her first three records established her as a commercially successful and critically respected artist, then she decided to take a break from performing to travel and write these incredible songs where she just totally lays herself bare. Those songs became Blue, which was a huge and instant success on basically every level. It’s widely regarded as Joni’s best album, and 42 years after its release it’s still gaining new fans, all of us attracted not just by her mindblowing talent but also by her honesty as she sings about her deepest secrets and desires.
These days Emma Watson seems to be writing her own Blue. She’s managed to protect her private life while using her work to reveal the kinds of vulnerabilities that feel the most private. It’s taken for granted that starting a career and becoming famous at a young age means sacrificing the space and peace necessary to learn about yourself or the rest of the world, but Emma has made time for both.
She also made time for me, and us, and this interview, and for that I thank her.
TAVI: I have watched Pretty Wild, the reality show about the real-life Bling Ring, so many times. I’m obsessed with Alexis Neiers, the girl you play in the movie. Have you heard from her about the film or anything?
EMMA WATSON: No, I haven’t. To be fair to Alexis, [my character] is like three steps removed from who she might be in real life. A lot of the material in the movie was based on an article which was based on a reality show, which we all know isn’t real life. I wasn’t trying to impersonate her—she just inspired the character. I watched Pretty Wild so many times to try and get her into my brain, though. It gave me anxiety. How do you watch it?
I think I have to pretend that it isn’t real. If you think about it too much it’s depressing. You have to shut your brain off and be like, “They’re not real people!”
But they are! Sofia filmed it in such a nonjudgmental way, though—she never tells the audience how they should feel about these characters, which I think might be quite unsettling for people who want to be told, “We should hate these people.” She made it so true to life, it almost feels like a documentary.
My final is tomorrow, so I’ve been living like a hermit. The only thing I have been watching—such a guilty pleasure, it’s the perfect study break ’cause you just don’t have to concentrate too hard—is The Carrie Diaries. Have you been watching it?
No!
[Laughs] So embarrassing to admit that! A 23-year-old that’s fully been watching The Carrie Diaries.
Not even.
Yep. No, it’s absolutely true. That’s been my study break.
What was it like working with Sofia Coppola?
It was a real dream of mine. I came to the part in a very roundabout way: I told my agent how much I loved Sofia’s work, and she’s like, “You should meet with her producer and [unofficial] casting director, Fred Roos,” and I did, and we got on really well, and that led to meeting Sofia, and she told me she was working on a project with young people in it. I read the script for The Bling Ring and I just got obsessed. For Sofia Coppola to be making a film which is a meditation on film and celebrity culture and what that all means, how it impacts society, and the psyches of young women in particular—I was like, “OK, I have to be in your movie. I really, really, really want to be in your movie.” For my audition I went out and bought hoop earrings and this crazy hat like the one Alexis wears when she goes to see her lawyer, and I put on tons of bronzer and a fake tan—I just went full-out, and had the best time doing it. ’Cause it’s really the first time I’ve gotten to play someone who’s a real character, someone just so different from me.
Sofia is incredibly smart, but she doesn’t try too hard. She’s very, very careful about the casting process, because when we get to the set she just wants to give everyone the space to do their own work. That attitude is so conducive to making a really interesting film, because she’s completely prepared to switch around the scene that we’re doing on a whim. She’ll be like, “You know what, guys? The light looks really beautiful in the room next door, so let’s just not do this scene today, we’ll do this [other] scene instead.” And everyone just moves next door. As an actress working with her, you have to be prepared for anything, because she likes capturing organic things, transcendent moments, changes in the wind and sun—which is awesome because you feel like you’re really part of creating something beautiful, but also very unnerving for me because I’m used to being inside a studio at Harry Potter and being incredibly controlled and sticking to a schedule. So it was fun—it felt very freeing.
I’ve read that the process of filming The Perks of Being a Wallflower was also quite different from the usual rigid studio schedule.
Yeah, we shot it in six weeks. I’d never worked such long hours or so hard in my life, but it was also obviously the most fun. We did a lot of night shoots, and [after shooting] you have so much adrenaline running through your system, it takes a few hours for you to wind down even though it’s like four in the morning. So oftentimes we would sit in the parking lot and—it sounds so cheesy—just watch the sun come up. When you make a movie on location, where you have to go and live somewhere outside your comfort zone, you have to create your own family, and you get so much closer than when you’re making a movie somewhere where everyone can stay in their own homes. And you’re all trying to create something, and through that creative process you make this bond that you wouldn’t really have under any other circumstances.
I got to work with Logan [Lerman], who plays Charlie, again in the last movie I did, Noah. He plays my brother, and it was great because we already had that chemistry; we didn’t really have to push for it. It was intimidating stepping onto that set, because [the movie] is Russell Crowe and Darren Aronofsky and Jennifer Connelly, so to have Logan there was just immensely comforting.
My understanding is that you read the script for Perks and called your agent and said you wanted to do it, and you found out that it had been sitting on a shelf for a while because no one wanted to make it. Why did you think it was so important for this movie to exist in the world?
Well, I’d been reading scripts for two years before Perks came along, and nothing had really resonated with me in the same way. It was just on my brain, it was on my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It didn’t even occur to me that it wouldn’t be made, because Logan was already attached, and I’d met with Stephen [Chbosky] and it was like he’d been waiting 12 years, really, to make this film. Then I got a call saying that no one wanted to back it financially. So it took more than phone calls: I actually flew out to L.A. and met with all the different studio heads and basically pitched the movie, which was crazy—I’d never done anything like that before in my life. [The story] just really spoke to my teenage experience and my friends’ teenage experiences. I felt like I’d watched too much Gossip Girl and was just dying to see something that spoke to the kinds of issues that I’d encountered as a young woman. It felt unique, and like someone had really written it from the heart.
* I have nothing against HP, I just never got around to it! I didn’t expect it to be “my thing” when the first one came out (I was like seven) and then I was too intimidated to start because I was so behind. It’s on my reading/watching list, though, I swear.
I wonder what parts of the script resonated for you, despite the fact that you were clearly working on other things that were unique in terms of teenage experience. Not to sound accusatory! Because there are parts of the story that are resonant no matter what.
No, not at all! It’s funny, Perks was really hard for me to talk about, because I think the person that people imagine me to be is someone who hasn’t gone through a lot of the issues that are talked about in the movie. When people see me, I’m on the red carpet, perfectly dressed and styled, after two hours of hair and makeup. I’m putting on a show. So when I explain that I have moments when I feel dark or insecure, I understand how it might not really ring true, because there’s this weird double-life thing I have going on. But I really related to Sam and Charlie’s friendship, because I have a very, very close male friend who has been friends with me since I was 15, 16, and I know that sometimes you just need someone who sees you differently from how you see yourself to make you love and believe in yourself. I really related to that. And I have a stepbrother, David, and [our relationship] reminds me a lot of the relationship that Sam has with Patrick in the movie. Also, I went to an all-girls secondary school, and I know that feeling where you’re at school and it’s intense and that group of people [you know there] are the be-all and end-all, and what they think of you is how you think it’s gonna be for the rest of your life. What I loved about Perks was that it was a fable where school was like this ecosystem with its own standards and all these cliques, and you have to try to assign yourself to one of them. I so identified with that feeling of, like, “I don’t feel accepted by this particular group of people, therefore there’s something wrong with me.” And actually that isn’t the case. The world, especially when you get to college, really opens out, and things do get better.
Just yesterday my friend emailed me an article called “Why You Never Truly Leave High School.”
It’s so true! It’s crazy!
It’s horrible! I feel like it’s so easy to feel that way, but this article backs [that feeling] up with all these crazy studies about how certain fears really do stick with you into adulthood. It was kind of scarring. I think that even though you’re part of something larger—the rest of the world—that you can explore once you graduate, if there isn’t a place for you in high school it’s hard to remember that. It’s easy to feel like This is how I’ll be forever! You have to remind yourself, like, I’m 17. I’m going to change. Perks captured that fear so well but made me feel like it would still be OK.
It’s very hard, even though it’s true [that things will change], to overcome those feelings. I’ll go back to my hometown and I’ll go to the pub and see the guys I grew up with, and it’s so crazy—I immediately go back to who I was when I was 12, when I thought I was just totally inadequate.
I think a lot of insecurity has little to do with reality. One thing I think about a lot and talk about on Rookie is how embarrassed you can be of yourself, and how when you’re a teenager you change a lot and constantly try to get away from who you used to be—I think that’s intensified if you are at all in the public eye. Do you ever feel like that? Like it’s not only the boys at home who can remind you of the “totally inadequate” person you used to be—it’s this whole public documentation of your life?
It’s called the impostor syndrome. It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved. I can’t possibly live up to what everyone thinks I am and what everyone’s expectations of me are. It’s weird—sometimes [success] can be incredibly validating, but sometimes it can be incredibly unnerving and throw your balance off a bit, because you’re trying to reconcile how you feel about yourself with how the rest of the world perceives you.
I paint and I draw and I write and I do other things too, and recently some people at school were asking if I’d ever publish any of my [written] work. But I almost feel like I would have to publish it under another name—just because there’s a definition of me out there that feels kind of stuck in the moment when it was formed. I was 15 or 16 then, and I’m now 23. I’m not complaining, because people really have given me permission to evolve and have been very supportive of my work outside of Harry Potter. So I don’t feel too suffocated in that sense. But sometimes I’ve felt a little constrained by that idea of who I’m meant to be. Every article that’s published about me has some reference to Hogwarts or Hermione or magic or “What would Harry and Ron say?”
But I just can’t allow myself to get frustrated by that, because I’m really proud to have been part of Harry Potter and proud of the work that I did on those movies. And it’s understandable—you can’t expect people to adjust their expectations overnight. I think it would be stupid to try and fight it too much. But certainly if I were to do anything else, I think I would have to create another kind of identity for myself that I could do it under.
Why is it important to you to have other outlets like writing or drawing?
I don’t know what it is. I’ve always kept and collected things, and I’ve always been interested in the idea of diaries. I must have 10 different personal diaries: I keep a dream diary, I keep a yoga diary, I keep diaries on people that I’ve met and things that they’ve said to me, advice that they’ve given me. I keep an acting journal. I keep collage books. They’ve given me a place where I can try to figure myself out, because those kinds of ideas feel too personal to put out into the public or even discuss with anyone else. It allows me to get things out of my head and work them out in a way that feels safe, which is really helpful. I can kind of play around with things.
That’s been a big part of what school has meant to me. I got famous very young, and [college] gave me a safe zone where I could figure things out without people projecting onto me their ideas of what they wanted me to be, or thought I should be.
Journaling is nice because no matter how hard something is to go through, you at least MADE something out of it, which is really satisfying.
Also, I think your thoughts are so much less frightening when they’re tangible, when you can see them on a page in front of you. And it’s less narcissistic and egotistical than releasing your own autobiography, which would be my worst nightmare. [Laughs] Maybe one day I would write some things out, but not for a while. Not for a while.
Though even when it is a private thing and there are no judgments, a blank page is still so intimidating. It makes me scared to even start.
I had an art teacher who said that there is nothing scarier than a blank canvas. Before he gave us our canvases he’d scribble or splash paint on them so that we didn’t have to work off this intimidating white space. I think there’s something to be said for that.
Richard Burton’s diaries came out [in December], and Elizabeth Taylor used to go through them and would write things in them—so he obviously wrote his diaries with the idea that people would read them, that they would be public. My diaries are very much written as if no one would ever read them. I have, actually… [She gets up and goes to another room, and returns with a stack of books and journals] This is what college does to you. You’re terrified of reading a book without a pen in your hand, because time is so much of the essence that the first time you read something, if you have an idea, you have to write it down, because there’s gonna be no time for you to read it again. So all of my books look like this. [Leafs through a book—every page is filled with notes and marginalia.] This is a really nice book that my dad got me in Venice. Everyone I’ve ever met who said anything interesting, everything is in here. Just so I remember these things.
Oh my god! You are so smart to keep all this!
Thank you! [Turning pages] So, I have Helena Bonham Carter, and this is Karl Lagerfeld—this is when he shot me for Crash magazine and I went to his studio in Paris. His studio is covered in books. He gave me two books which he illustrated, and he suggested that I should do that one day. He said so many funny things. This is Tim Burton. This is one of my acting teachers from RADA [the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]…Jean Shrimpton…this is David Yates. Rupert [Grint] has a page. [Laughs] James Franco has a page. My mother has a page. I just get terrified I’ll forget things! [Finding a card in the stack of books] Oh, this is so cool—this is from the president!
No!
[Laughs] Yeah! That’s their dog! Isn’t that insane?
Totally! Is acting like journaling for you, like you’re figuring yourself out through a role?
Absolutely. But it’s actually through the characters are are the least like me I figure out the most about myself. Playing Nicki in The Bling Ring gave me such insight into myself—parts of me that I’m uncomfortable with, or that I don’t like. I realized through playing her that I can be so judgmental in a way that I wish I wasn’t. And I found things that I had in common with her, which was difficult as well.
The fact that you experience that feeling of insecurity that we talked about before, no matter how successful you may seem to be—that probably helped you show us the insecurity in Sam [in the movie]. Like, there’s this thing Jodie Foster wrote where she said that as an actor you’re supposed to expose your vulnerabilities and the parts of yourself that you don’t like… I’m sorry, I just did my least favorite interview thing, where someone just says something instead of asking a question.
No, no! It’s so much nicer when it’s a conversation. If you just do the whole question/answer thing I end up repeating myself so much. When the other person offers new angles on things, you can hopefully say something new. But yeah, it’s funny: The day that I shot the scene where I had my first kiss with Logan, I just wasn’t feeling good—I was feeling really tired at that point, and that was my most important scene in the movie. I remember begging Stephen, “Please could we do it another day, I just don’t feel like I can do it today.” And he did this really cool thing where he drew a line outside my trailer and was like, “When you step over that line, that’s when you have to let go of everything, let go of you—you have to just go and be present as Sam, and leave everything else that you’re worrying about behind.”
Stephen has been such a great mentor to me. He was actually here last night, helping me with my homework. He came over and I made him dinner, and he helped me figure out what I was gonna write my thesis on. He’s just the best. He’s someone who walked into my life and just got me. I remember when I first met him—he came to my hotel, and within 20 minutes he had insights about me that I don’t even know if my family has. That was what made me believe that I could play Sam. Because I get worried sometimes—I get crazy. After Harry Potter I didn’t feel very confident in myself as an actor. It’s lucky that I’ve improved that now, but back then I needed someone to believe in me, and Stephen really did.
I read Perks in eighth grade, and I was so relieved that the movie would be in his hands. It feels like something that should have come out in the ’90s and been misunderstood, and later become some kind of cult thing—it’s heartening that it’s so embraced. It’s partially about the parts of yourself you don’t like, so the fact that everyone seems to relate to it is really comforting.
It’s funny, I was talking to Steve last night about Girls, and he was like, “Why do people make such a big deal about it?” I think it just came about at a moment when young women are bombarded by images of perfection which no human being can really achieve, and then Lena Dunham comes along and she’s on TV and she’s like this perfectly imperfect human being, and so are all of the other characters. I think that’s why it’s just caught on like wildfire.
My friend texted me during the Golden Globes and was like, “It’s so weird to see someone I feel I could be friends with accepting an award—someone who talks and laughs and smiles like normal people I know.”
I think her and Adele were like the two breaths of fresh air in the whole thing.
They were so honest about just being really excited.
Yeah, but not in like a…[smiles, tears up, and breathes heavily, beauty-pageant-style], but in a really genuine way. I think Lena and Adele can kind of establish themselves as that [genuine] person from the beginning, whereas it would be very difficult for more-established actors, or anyone who’s been on that stage a few times, who’s been running the circuit for a while, to step out of that kind of rigid thing that they’ve been doing, which they now feel they have to keep doing—they can’t break face, in a way.
Yeah, it would be weird if Julianne Moore was suddenly like, “I’m keeping it real, guys!” It’s perfectly natural for her to be dignified the way she is.
That’s something that I struggle with all the time, is how do you act natural when you’re on a red carpet and there are people screaming at you from this way and that and you feel so watched and observed? It is an unnatural situation, so it’s very difficult to find a way to be authentic. I find that to a certain degree my body just shuts down. It’s sensory overload—your body goes into a kind of defense mode. People try to have conversations with me when I step off a red carpet, and I can’t—I kind of just go numb and my brain stops functioning. So it’s difficult to find a way to be real, because it’s such an unreal situation. But hats off to [Lena and Adele], they really killed it.
Then there’s the fear of being too “Look, I’m being sincere!”
Oh my god, completely. Sometimes I hear myself in interviews and I feel like I’m in that skit from Extras where one actor is taking the piss out of celebrities who are like, “I’m so normal! Look at me being really normal, doing all of this normal stuff!” You can take it to a point where it’s like, “Well, yeah, my life is kind of weird and I can’t pretend that I live exactly like everyone else,” because it’s an extraordinary set of circumstances to be under, so you try to find that middle ground. But yeah—sometimes I hear myself back and I’m like, “This just sounds like bullshit.” [Laughs] Do you ever do interviews?
We put out a book, so I did some stuff to tell people about it. Normally we get on a plane and go somewhere and I remember how to talk in sound bites, but once this person came to our home, and it was just too close. I had just come home from school and we did it in my house right away, but I was just…
I can completely relate to that. I remember when I was young, getting ready to go to a Lord of the Rings premiere, and literally getting changed in my school’s toilet. It’s just really surreal and odd. You feel quite vulnerable.
I was talking to a friend about it, but I stopped myself because it’s such a silly thing to complain about. [Another friend] told me it’s all relative.
It is all relative. In order to stay sane you have to give yourself permission to talk about these feelings and put them out there, because it’s so unhealthy for you to feel like there isn’t space for you to consider what you’re going through. It’s such a necessary part of the human condition. I completely agree [that it feels silly]—I feel the same way—but you just have to find the people who understand that you’re a human being. There’s maybe two or three people I can do that with.
Right, and though it’s not a terrible problem, it’s hard to relate to, and that does emphasize how it can be—
Isolating.
Yeah. Exactly.
Similar to you, I used to try to hide what I was doing, and I would end up in these awkward positions where I would have to go and do something [for work] but I would say I was doing something else. I would try to hide that I had a car picking me up—I would ask them to park around the corner so that people would think I was walking. All of these elaborate kinds of schemes to pretend I was like everyone else. I’ve gotten to a point now where, like, for example: I’m doing this class at NYU, and sometimes a driver comes to pick me up in case there are paparazzi outside, or there are people who have come to wait for me [to come out], and I just get straight into the car so I feel safe. And yeah, if the kids come out and see a black SUV and they go, “Oh, Emma Watson’s getting into a car”—you just hope that people will understand.
I know you’re going back to Brown this fall, after taking a couple of years off for work. What made you decide on that school?
A few different things. I really like the fact that it has a very open curriculum, that there aren’t any requirements. Really, I’ve kind of been in charge of my own education since I started out on Potter when I was 9 or 10, and I liked that I could design my own major if I wanted to, and I could take independent studies if I wanted to on subjects that weren’t necessarily in the curriculum. I did an independent study on the psychology and philosophy of how and why we fall in love, which was awesome. [Laughs]
Whoa! Do you know why? Can you tell me?
[Laughs] We’d need like six hours! Opportunities like that, and the idea of classes being pass/fail, make it sound as if you don’t have to work as hard, but it actually gives you the freedom to try out things that you wouldn’t be able to do if you had to get a certain GPA on your transcript. It lets you take classes that you wouldn’t otherwise. And it attracts a certain type of student: [someone] very independent who wants to take responsibility and control of what they’re learning. That really appealed to me as well.
What is a dream project for you? Not just film, necessarily.
Well, there’s different things you get out of different types of projects, and you can’t expect to get everything in one bundle. Perks was really special because I made friends that I’ll probably have for life. With Bling Ring, through learning about the character I learned more about myself. On Noah, I ended up doing months’ worth of research on one scene for the movie. And I got to work with Darren [Aronofsky], who really pushed me to be a better actress. In terms of my next project, I really want to do a romantic comedy. I’ve been looking for the perfect script. I’m getting to the point where I’m like, “I just need to write the damn thing myself,” because it’s so hard to find something that’s original and really funny. But I’d love to do something like that, just because the last two or three movies I did were kind of heavy.
I’m a real director chaser. I really want to work with Danny Boyle or Ang Lee, I’d love to work with Lynne Ramsay, I’d love to work with Tom Hooper, David Fincher—I have this endless list. I’ll do whatever as long as I can be part of someone else’s creative vision, someone who isn’t just creating something as a piece of entertainment, but is genuinely creating a piece of art. Though it’s nice if it’s commercially successful at the same time. [Laughs] I’m big on directors, more than I am about working with particular actors.
Do you think that’s something you’d ever do yourself?
Maybe. I would definitely be interested. I’m obsessed with being very thorough and very in control and very researched, and so I would only do it if I felt like I had enough knowledge. I’d like to produce as well, so we’ll see.
I was reading an interview with Lena Dunham by Miranda July, and they were saying that it’s easier now to work in different mediums and have your body of work be more about your point of view than about honing a particular craft. I guess acting requires a kind of permission from others, and just thinking about your journals, I think it’s great that you have a strong point of view and that you can work in various mediums that let you express it in different ways, and I look forward to seeing all that you do. Aaah! I always feel silly complimenting people who are older than me because it feels condescending!
No, I don’t see it that way at all! That’s a really nice thing to hear. For me it’s about knowing that what I have to say, I really believe in. I’m not gonna put anything out there just for the sake of it. I’m trying to find a really confident artistic voice before I put myself out there, because it’s so easy for people to squash you. I want to make sure that what I make is something I really have the goods to back up.
I think that is what is so special about you and about Lena, is that you’re very young people who already have a very established point of view—you have a strong set of values that you can translate into different art forms. I guess my figuring out who I am and what those values are has become quite diluted, because I’ve just been working so much and been so tied up in being so many other identities that it doesn’t feel as concrete or asestablished yet as I would like it to be. I’m still not quite sure what my message is, what I’m trying to communicate [through my work].
Those other identities have taught you things as well.
Yeah, they have. It’s interesting, because people say things to me like, “It’s really cool that you don’t go out and get drunk all the time and go to clubs,” and I’m just like, I mean, I appreciate that, but I’m kind of an introverted kind of person just by nature, it’s not like a conscious choice that I’m making necessarily. It’s genuinely who I am. Have you seen Quiet by Susan Cain?
No!
It discusses how extraverts in our society are bigged up so much, and if you’re anything other than an extravert you’re made to think there’s something wrong with you. That’s like the story of my life. Coming to realize that about myself was very empowering, because I had felt like Oh my god, there must be something wrong with me, because I don’t want to go out and do what all my friends want to do. Anyway, I just went off on a tangent…
I think we were talking about putting out something you really believe in.
I just feel so uncomfortable with being a Google News article, really with being in the media in any way, that if I have to be in the public eye, I want it to be for something that was worth it. I’m just taking my time over it. It’s building, it’s got some layers. It’s getting there.
Credit: Rookie
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