Emma Watson (9 page)

With such an enormous source book to cram into one film, it was inevitable that some aspects of the plot would have to go. ‘Inevitably you kill off some darlings’ was David Heyman’s slightly luvvie-ish explanation for the cuts during an interview with
Premiere
magazine. ‘This was the longest book so far, and there are things that I love that we can’t have. Again, we have taken out elements that don’t relate as directly to Harry and Harry’s journey.’

One casualty was a delightful subplot involving Hermione and her battle to improve the lot of one of Rowling’s most downtrodden creations. ‘Yeah, SPEW [Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare] which is the
whole Hermione-fighting-for-the-rights-of-the-house-elves bit,’ Heyman said. ‘It is funny, but it doesn’t relate to Harry’s story. So it falls by the wayside.’

As Heyman had hoped,
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
is indeed a reassuringly British affair, and many scenes have a grimy, postwar look to them. Emma’s Hermione acts as a go-between, negotiating the teenage head-butting of Ron and Harry, despite pointing out that she is not an owl (the preferred message carriers at Hogwarts) when asked to pass on one message too many. She’s even caught in a clinch with Harry by Rita Skeeter. But it’s two new young men who really catch her eye. There’s Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski), the ‘best Quidditch seeker in the world’, according to Ron, and ruddy-faced ‘strapping lad’ Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson). The future
Twilight
star – who would go on to play vampire Edward Cullen in the cult American franchise – makes his entrance by jumping out of a tree. ‘Very manly’ was Emma’s appraisal of Pattinson’s look for the film. ‘Rugged and dirty … it’s good!’

‘Everyone was going pretty crazy over him when
Harry Potter
was released,’ Emma later told
Access Hollywood
when asked about Pattinson’s breakthrough role in the film. ‘He’s quite eccentric, he’s very funny. He reads a lot, he writes a lot. He’s a cool guy.’

Despite the epic Quidditch sequences, mid-air dragon battles and underwater monsters, the stand-out section of the film didn’t involve fancy digital effects or intense battle scenes – just a simple walk down some stairs. The scene is the Christmas Eve Yule Ball – an opportunity for some
‘well-mannered frivolity’, according to Professor Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith). There is the usual jockeying for dates among the students, the kind you’d see in any teen movie. Neither Ron nor Harry has asked Hermione – a big mistake, when they clap eyes on her. ‘That’s the thing I loved doing,’ she told MTV. ‘Because I can relate, in so many ways, to her situation and what’s happening to her. How insensitive boys can be, how awkward it can be. It’s always that boy who’s mean to you and teases you who’s actually the guy who has the huge crush on you.’

With her hair styled half up and half down and wearing a stunning pink satin dress, Emma/Hermione finally gets to shed the tatty jumpers and ratty hairdos and
shine
as she walks down the steps to enter the ball. ‘That dress! I felt such pressure, I cannot even begin to tell you,’ she later told fans on her official website. ‘This was Hermione’s big reveal where she goes from being perceived as just bookish and nerdy to being beautiful. It’s the moment I suppose when Ron finally sees what he’s missing. But I remember being terrified I’d fall down the stairs, everyone was watching me!’

Emma’s face when Krum clicks his heels, bows and takes her hand is worth the price of admission in itself. ‘It was,’ she said, ‘a duckling-into-swan kind of moment.’

Emma had previously said that
Pretty Woman
, starring Julia Roberts, was one of her favourite films. In one key scene, Roberts makes quite an entrance in a striking red dress. Now Emma had been given a scene-stealing entrance of her own. ‘It was amazing actually,’ she told
The Early Show
in 2005. ‘To some extent, I always played
down the way I looked in the films. Suddenly, they really wanted this kind of Julia Roberts
Pretty Woman
-esque moment. It was beautiful and for this scene you had to learn to waltz, which was fantastic. All the cast was involved. It was great.’

Stanislav Ianevski – who’d never acted professionally before – was suitably bullish about the dancing scenes, as befits a young man playing a heroic Quidditch player. ‘I think we made a great dancing couple,’ he said in an interview with the Scholastic website. ‘I enjoyed it a lot and I hope she enjoyed it as well. It was very good. Yes, we had lessons where we were taught the different dances. It was quite tough at first, but, once we got into them, we were really one of the best couples there.’

Emma explained, ‘Hermione is totally swept off her feet and that’s nice. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her.’

In fact, Emma is seen waltzing for only a few brief moments, but she had clearly been bitten by the dancing bug and even fancied showing off her skills on a
well-known
TV competition. ‘I’m desperate to be on [BBC1’s]
Strictly Come Dancing
,’ she said. ‘The best bit about doing the new Harry Potter movie was that I got to learn how to waltz and now I’ve fallen in love with ballroom dancing. I don’t know if they will ask me to come and do it – I guess we’ll have to see what they think of my moves in the film.’

More time is given to her bopping to a rock band led by Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker. Krum’s courting of Hermione shocks the other two main characters – it certainly gets Ron’s ‘wand in knot’. ‘I thought the introduction of romance in what is a much darker film and this kind of
awkwardness between boys and girls makes up for quite a lot of the humour,’ Emma told
Newsround
. ‘I think it’s great. Stanislav was a really nice guy, genuinely a really, really nice guy. We had a lot of fun learning to dance, it was great.’

Despite all the razzle-dazzle of the effects sequences, it was this moment that caught many of the reviewers’ attention when the film was released in November 2005. ‘Harry and Ron find themselves furious, confused and resentful to see that Hermione scrubs up into a
premier-league
babe and is being squired by the young foreign wizard superstar,’ said the
Guardian
. ‘But she’d accepted his invitation only because she was sick of waiting for either of these two dullards (particularly Ron) to do the decent thing and invite her. Hermione is angry and heartbroken at their churlish sneering, and Emma Watson’s gutsy, confident performance nicely shows that inside and outside the world of magic there is a growing discrepancy between a teenage girl’s status and her accelerating emotional and intellectual development.’

‘An unexpectedly black and at times very frightening foray into the less fun side of wizardry and magic,’ said the
Telegraph
. ‘Hermione (Emma Watson), meanwhile, takes her nose out of magic books long enough to doll herself up in makeup and ball gown and to such lovely effect that she even takes Ron’s breath away.’

The
Daily Mail
agreed: ‘Emma Watson’s studious Hermione comes into her own at the fabulous Christmas Ball, which provides a breather after the first task, in which Harry does battle with a fearsome Hungarian Horntail
dragon in a gripping sequence that will have small fry ducking for cover.’

In fact, there was so much concern about how small fry would react to the film that it was decided to give it a 12A rating, meaning that children under 12 couldn’t see the film without a grown-up. ‘You can really spot the differences in the four films,’ Helen Pang of the British Board of Film Classification explained. ‘The first one,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
, was classified back in October 2001 and Harry and his friends were so sweet and innocent then. As the characters have become teenagers and are more experienced in magic, the tone of the films has become darker, the moments of intensity more frequent and there are far fewer jokes and lighter moments. The result is that this is the first Harry Potter film at 12A. Be prepared for a very different film to the first three!’

Although it could limit the access that young fans had to the film – maybe even affect its box-office performance – Emma agreed with the censors’ decision: ‘The audience who were the first fans of Harry Potter have grown up with the films. We may have lost some of the much younger audience, but I’m in it and I was scared! This book is much more of a thriller than it has ever been before. The films have always been about being faithful to the books and we cannot avoid the fact that someone dies in it. They have made something that is true to the book.’

So Emma’s entrance at the Yule Ball created a stir, but so did her appearance at the film’s London premiere on 6 November 2005. E
MMA OUTSHINES STARS AT
P
OTTER PREMIERE
, proclaimed the headline in the
Daily Mail
,
claiming that the young actress was the centre of attention rather than star guests such as Rob Lowe, Kate Beckinsale and Madonna, although the Material Girl admitted she’d never read any of Rowling’s books. Emma created even more excitement among the crowd and the press than the caged, fire-breathing dragon that had been set up outside the cinema. ‘At 15, she has not had many years to refine her public image,’ the
Mail
gushed. ‘But Emma Watson proved she could grab the limelight just as effectively as Madonna as she arrived for the premiere of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
. Miss Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, looked every inch the movie star as she sashayed down the red carpet in Leicester Square.’

Emma was dressed in a striking embroidered white gown, white headband and gold slippers; again, she had showed she was a fashionista to watch. What’s more, the outfit was a dress with a backstory. ‘I looked everywhere for the perfect dress and then I found this vintage 1920s dress in a shop in Notting Hill and I fell in love with it,’ she told reporters. ‘But what’s amazing is that I’ve since discovered it was specially made for a 1920s screen goddess, which makes it even more appropriate.’

At the time, Emma drew a discreet veil over the actual story behind the dress until the full details were known. The dress had actually belonged to another child star, Anna May Wong, who started in films aged 13. Her first picture was the 1919 melodrama
The Red Lantern
. After her initial success as a teenager, Anna May had then carved out a career for herself as a vampish seductress.
She died in 1961. Emma had bought the dress from an antiques shop in Notting Hill run by Virginia Bates, who told the
Sunday Telegraph
that the damaged garment had brought to her by the late actress’s maid. ‘It was her who revealed that the dress belonged to Anna May,’ she said. ‘Anna May’s personal maid had lived with her in Hollywood and when the actress died her maid was given several of her personal effects. It was handmade and in those days they had their own seamstress, so there is no designer. They would have seen something in Paris and used that as a blueprint for a dress which Anna May probably only wore once.’

Despite what many people expected, Emma got no assistance when it came to choosing premiere outfits. ‘Everyone imagines there were stylists on tap from the studio, but we got nothing,’ she later told journalist Lisa Armstrong. ‘Sometimes I had two days’ notice before an event and there was nothing appropriate for a 14-year-old to wear. I’d look in my wardrobe and … literally, nothing. It was either borrow from my stepmother or go to the bridesmaid department of Harrods.’

J. K. Rowling’s sixth Potter book –
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
– had been released less than four months earlier, so many of the journalists’ questions were about the future of the franchise and in particular the next film – the fifth –
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
. ‘Every film takes, like, a year to do and the six months after that is all the production, so you kind of have to take it one film at a time because otherwise it’s a bit overwhelming,’ Emma told reporters. ‘But I can tell you
that I’m back in February for the fifth film. I’m on for the fifth, I know that much.’

Producer David Heyman confirmed that there would be changes: ‘It starts filming in February. We asked Mike [Newell] if he would do it and he said no. These films are real endurance tests and I don’t know how Chris Columbus managed to do two back to back. At the end of each film we ask the director if they want to do the next one. We asked Alfonso [Cuarón] to do the fourth and he said no and Mike said no to the fifth. We’ve hired someone called David Yates, who is a brilliant director. He directed
State of Play, Girl in the Café
and
Sex Traffic
. I think we’ve been really lucky. Each director has been just right for the film they’ve done and I think David Yates is the right director for the fifth film.’

For her part – four films in and with a fifth just round the corner – Emma was as comfortable with the
red-carpet
experience as she was with playing the part that had made her famous. But maybe, as in Miranda Richardson’s spoof of Emma in
Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan
, Emma and Hermione were now one and the same. ‘It felt like I didn’t have to act at times,’ she admitted. ‘I know Hermione so well. There’s so much of her in me, and me in her. It’s been wonderful and I’m very fond of Hermione’s character. She’s turning into someone that people can identify with and she’s a great role model.’

There were veiled suggestions in some parts of the press that Emma had been ‘worse for wear’ after the
Goblet of Fire
premiere – a surprising claim to be made about anyone
with such a squeaky-clean, sensible reputation. What’s more, it was claimed that she and the other Potter stars were contractually obliged to keep on the straight and narrow, something she has since denied: ‘I’ve never seen a “good behaviour” clause – I honestly think that’s a myth – but I actually wouldn’t ever need one. It’s just not necessary. Daniel, Rupert and I have been incredibly protected doing the Harry Potter movies. There seems to be this feeling that all of us were bursting to break out of these images we had created, but that’s never been the case. We all share the same view. None of us court celebrity, none of us want to be part of the game. I’m not tempted by parties or drugs. I don’t actually like being drunk, particularly in public.’