Emma Watson is on the cover of Interview magazine. All the shots are black and white but and as Emma is dressed in sort of a 1960s London throwback, it feels like you’re leafing through vintage pictures. I’d wished she’d smiled a bit more but overall I like the editorial. Emma is interviewed by fellow actor Jessica Chastain by phone. The start of the interview is basically the two of them catching up. The fact that they are friends is stated in the intro and is obvious throughout. Through the first few questions it’s established that Emma is in the bathtub in Paris where she is working. Jessica is also in a hotel but we don’t know where, although she said “There are bags of hair extensions and makeup and clothes everywhere.” So I assume she is also working. Ah, the glamour of it all. You can read the full interview here. Much of the interview focuses on the scrutiny under which Emma lives and how she worries about how she is perceived.
“Dan[iel Radcliffe], Rupert [Grint], and I were kids when we got cast in this fairy-tale series, and what happened to us was kind of a fantasy story in itself,” Watson told Jessica Chastain for Interview Magazine’s new cover story.
“So the story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I’ve been so passionate about having a private identity,” she explained. “When I step into a character, people have to be able to suspend their disbelief; they have to be able to divorce me from that girl. And not having everyone know every single intimate detail of my entire life is part of me trying to protect my ability to do my job well.”
Protecting that identity can be daunting, but without it, Watson knows her career would suffer. “I know that I’m under a different microscope, a certain level of scrutiny, which I find really hard at times,” she revealed.
“And sometimes the fear of doing things is overwhelming. I get incredibly overwhelmed, and sometimes feel hemmed in by that, afraid of that,” she added. “But I know that if I live in that fear, then my life as an artist, as a human being, really, is over. Ultimately, it will silence me, and it will silence what is in me — which I have yet to explore and uncover.”
That fear wasn’t always there. When she was cast in Harry Potter, Watson said she remembered having “this fearlessness.” Now, as she faces more challenges in the spotlight, she’s made sure to push through her reservations. “Like in Beauty and the Beast, I sang for the first time,” she explained, adding, “And journalists would ask me, ‘Do you think you’re going to be able to pull it off?’”
Emma’s “overwhelmed” comments were in response to Jessica’s question, “I’ve learned so much about acting and theater and films—life in general—from making mistakes. Do you feel the freedom to do that?” Emma uses someone else’s quote or story to introduce many of her points in the interview. She admits she must “talk everything out” and get everyone’s opinion before making decisions. Reading these comments makes me think Emma is an aural learner, if using the VARK Modalities. I too am an aural learner so I empathize with her. Aural learners often don’t know what point we are trying to make until we’ve said our thoughts out loud. As a result, many times what we say at first is not what we mean. It becomes easier to remain silent. Ultimately, silence can feel like the loss of “fearlessness,” just as Emma said. I always had trouble reconciling how playful Emma was in live interviews vs. her more serious print pieces but after reading this, I see her in a whole new light. People were shocked she would prioritize her education over her acting career and it seemed a bit lofty to take a year off to learn about feminism but in truth, I think she needs breathers from time to time.
Later in the interview, Emma talks about having had a hard couple of weeks and a friend of hers advises, “You need to feel sh–ty for a day or two and be angry and upset and hurt and grieve a little bit… You need to cry a bit and get angry.” That sounds a little like a break-up, doesn’t it? I wonder if she and Mack Knight are done? That would be too bad, I thought they suited each other well.
Photo credit: Peter Lindbergh/Interview Magazine and WENN Photos
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmbmtibn96e8SmpJqXp5bBtLvNmJ2ippSorKSxy56Zq6GkrqyltcWfoJytnKmsqqvGnquYoZ6Yv6awyJujspefq7Kzw8eeo6adlGQ%3D