Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Emma Watson brought seven Beanie Babies and lucky talismans to her first Harry Potter audition. She never once considered she was auditioning for any other role. Nine auditions and eighteen months later, she was Hermione.
Where this was said
At 33:00 · chapter starts 31:22
Emma Watson begins with an admission that cuts through Hollywood mythology: when cast members are asked in press junkets whether they're all friends, everyone nods enthusiastically, but the truth is almost no one sees each other outside of work. Schedules are brutal, energy reserves are depleted, and real friendship requires proximity, time, and presence — all of which big productions structurally deny. [1] — Emma Watson "Everyone on a big film nods enthusiastically when asked if the cast are friends. The truth is almost no one has seen each other outside of …" 29:50 The truly painful part, she says, is having to perform a closeness you desperately wish were real. The Harry Potter franchise was different, she notes — it had a genuine family feeling — but even that had its limits. Jay Shetty then steers the conversation to the audition origin story, and Emma describes bringing seven Beanie Babies and lucky talismans to her first audition at age nine, certain from the moment it was announced that Hermione was hers. She had never auditioned professionally. Yet she completed nine rounds over more than a year and a half, sustained entirely by the love she felt for the character and the books her father had read to her on long drives to France. The segment ends on a word she keeps returning to: destiny.
Emma Watson went through nine Harry Potter auditions over more than a year and a half starting from age nine before winning the role of Hermione Granger.
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