Bonnie Wright admits feeling ‘anxious and frustrated’ by Harry Potter screen time
Actor briefly debuted as Ginny Weasley in the first movie and eventually became a bigger part of the story later on
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Your support makes all the difference.Bonnie Wright has reflected on her Harry Potter years, admitting that she found her screen time “a little bit disappointing”.
The now-32-year-old was only 10 when she made her brief acting debut as Ginny Weasley in 2001’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
While Wright appeared in every film of the seven-movie franchise, it wasn’t until her character became Daniel Radcliffe’s lead character’s love interest that she gained more of a screen presence.
Speaking with Michael Rosenbaum on the latest episode of his Inside of You podcast, Wright explained how at the time, she was worried she wasn’t doing her character justice with the limited screen time she was given.
“I definitely feel there was anxiety toward performing and doing the best thing as my character built, for instance,” the British actor said. “Like, ‘Oh gosh, will I do justice to this character that people love?’
“So that was always hard to do, especially when, inevitably, a lot of the scenes of every character were chopped down from the book to the film. So you didn’t really have as much to show in the film.”
She continued: “Sometimes that was a little disappointing because there were parts of the character that just didn’t get to come through because there weren’t the scenes to do that.
“That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess.”
Wright, however, never expressed those feelings towards the producers, as she said “there was no room for much change in those scripts”.
“There were a million executives going through them all,” she said. “I think what I maybe took, which I don’t take so much to heart now, is I kind of felt that maybe my anxiety was about, ‘Oh, I’m going to be seen as badly portraying this character,’ rather than later realising that I wasn’t really given the opportunity to do that. So it wasn’t really my fault, exactly.”
She added that “when fans do share that disappointment they do it in a way that is like, ‘We know it wasn’t you. We just wanted more of you.’
“And that’s the same of every character. If only they could be five-hour-long movies.”
In April, Max announced that it was working with author JK Rowling to develop a “decades-long” Harry Potter TV adaption.
Featuring a new cast, the streamer promised that the series would be a “faithful adaption of the beloved books”. Each season will be based on one of the seven books.
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