Authors: David Nolan
‘Dan’s been telling people I pounced on him and that I’m an animal,’ Emma responded. ‘I just wanted to make it as real as possible. It obviously had to be something that would disturb Ron and make him really jealous, so from Hermione’s end it had to be passionate. It’s written all over Rupert’s face that he really loves her.’
Daniel continued, ‘It was kind of weird. It’s a bit like kissing your sister. I’m not complaining! It was good. It was
vigorous
. For me, I wasn’t too freaked out. But it’s a bigger deal for Emma. I think it generally is a bigger deal for girls.’
‘It is full-on,’ Emma told MTV News. ‘Actually, I forgot how full-on it was until I saw the movie, and I was like, “Blimey, where did that come from?”’
Emma and Daniel had another tender scene to perform. Director David Yates would later tell the
Daily Mail
that it was his favourite moment. ‘It’s where Hermione and Harry dance together and is not in the book,’ he said. ‘It’s something we create for the film and is actually very tender. They also reveal some secrets about each other while dancing.’
‘Me and Hermione just start dancing to this song – together,’ Daniel told ITV1. ‘It’s a slow song and a slow dance. It is a very lovely and tender scene and it’s the only
moment between Harry and Hermione where you go, “Are they about to do something?”’
A mixture of the story’s intensity, the sheer length of the shoot and the fact that Emma was jetting back and forth to maintain her courses at Brown took its toll: ‘There were days where it was so unglamorous. There were days where I’d fall asleep anywhere – our on-set photographer has pictures of me falling asleep in chairs, on the floor, in the middle of the set. Curled up. Like a cat.’
Along with the running, being continually dropped into water, the torture and being made to kiss young men who were like her brothers, there was at least one moment of glamour for Emma to savour. During the filming of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour’s wedding, Emma finally got to dress up. ‘I get to wear a pretty spectacular outfit. It’s kind of sexy, actually … by Hermione standards. It’s red, quite low-cut … She’s a young woman now so she’s allowed to be a bit sexy.’
Finally, there was the issue of how to film the ending of the entire series, where we see the older versions of Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione and discover how their lives have turned out in middle age. Various methods were tried to create the effect, including some long stints in the makeup chair. ‘It was a pretty lengthy process,’ she told the Scholastic website. ‘I think it was, like, over two hours. But it was really subtle. They had this thin film that they put on our faces which went into our wrinkles to make all of that happen. Really subtle details made a huge difference. I wore fake teeth and a wig, but it all looked really real, so it was cool.’
Despite the relatively light touch of the makeup department, Emma vowed that she did not want to undergo the experience again: ‘Prosthetics are horrible. I’m going to avoid doing a movie with prosthetics, like my life depends on it. I’m glad I had a taste of that experience, enough to know it’s miserable.’
Instead of makeup, producer David Heyman had been keen to use the digital technology used to enable Brad Pitt to age more than 60 years backwards from looking like a very old man in
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
. ‘I am nervous about that,’ Daniel Radcliffe told
Empire
, ‘because, if it’s good I’ll be really, really pleased; if it’s not good and that’s what people are left with, that would be awful. If it’s a choice between having me, Rupert and Emma looking a bit stupid and it being slightly comical or having other actors play us, I would go for other actors every time. So, we’ll see.’
Director David Yates felt there was a great deal at stake for Emma and her co-stars this time around, and
Deathly
Hallows
was their chance to show what they were made of. ‘They’re getting older,’ he told the Collider film website. ‘Which just means they’ve got more resources at their fingertips because, as an actor, everything you do comes from your experience of life – more than your experience on a film set, frankly, sometimes. It’s the last time they’re ever going to play these characters. They had a stake here to prove themselves to the fan base and to a global audience. The material’s a bit richer and more nuanced this time. A bit more melancholic. They get more time with these quite grown-up scenes and I always push them to try
to find authenticity in what they do together. That’s what I want from them. So all those things together meant, I think, that they’re able to give more than they’ve ever had a chance to give before and they were so excited when they first read the script. I sat with them in the boardroom at Leavesden, and we sat and they read it and they were so buzzed because they got to do all these things together, which was less about magic and more about them.’
There were some final additions to the stellar list of British acting talent that had leant weight to the Potter films throughout the series. Rhys Ifans appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood, father of Luna and editor of the wizarding magazine
The Quibbler
. ‘When you’re a British actor and you get the call from Harry Potter, that’s like getting your stripes,’ he said about getting the part. ‘It was great. You end up on set and there’s all these actors that you’ve worked with before or crossed paths with. So we’d all be sitting there in our chairs eating our soggy English sandwiches, pumping it up, dressed up like wizards. It was a pleasantly surreal experience.’
The other new face was Bill Nighy as Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour. Nighy seemed almost relieved that he had been cast in
Deathly Hallows
. ‘For a while, I thought I would be the only English actor of a certain age who wasn’t in a Harry Potter film,’ he said.
While the
Deathly Hallows
filming was at its height, an astonishing figure came to light – a figure that would put into sharp relief Emma’s place in the entertainment pecking order and her importance in terms of the international film industry.
Vanity Fair
magazine
published a list of Hollywood’s highest-paid women – the women who earned the most money during the previous year. On the list were the usual suspects: Sandra Bullock – an Emma favourite – earned $20 million; Angelina Jolie made $21 million; Cameron Diaz? Her pay packet was $27 million. But top of the list – Hollywood’s highestpaid actress – was Emma Watson. What’s more, she came 14th in the overall list of top Hollywood money spinners – the top five were all movie producers with
Transformers
man Michael Bay at number one. She was the youngest person to make that top list. While still in her teens, Emma Watson – cold and wet in a draughty aircraft hangar in Watford – was named the number-one female movie star in the world.
Meanwhile, the second phase of Burberry’s new campaign got under way and there were some new faces alongside Emma’s in the photoshoot, again done by Mario Testino. One of them was her brother Alex. By this time, the 17-year-old had acquired the tag of ‘celebrity sibling’. He’d got a bit part on the Potter film series and now he had a top-line modelling job. ‘I never used to care about what I wore, but now Emma will say, “You look scruffy – you’re not going to an event in that, are you?” So she will tell me what to wear,’ he told the
Daily
Mail. ‘We’re close, even though she’s at uni in the US. She’s a positive influence; she’s always looking out for my interests.’
Alex had also been signed up by the Storm modelling agency. ‘Today is really special for me in a number of different ways,’ she said of the shoot. ‘It’s so nice to see Mario
and Christopher again. They also shot my brother in the campaign. He’s having such a great time. He’s so psyched.’
Emma was pictured sporting a variety of trench coats and clutch bags for the spring/summer campaign and artistic director Christopher Bailey – who’d recently been named British Designer of the Year – was clearly delighted at getting Emma back on board. ‘We’ve worked again with Emma Watson, who has a classic, effortless beauty and is incredibly talented,’ he said. ‘We wanted this kind of eclectic but very cool crowd of people. We always talk about how much fun we have making these images and I wanted to capture some of the excitement that you feel on set when all these different creative attitudes and personalities come together. Mario has shot these as both stills and video, so we can share some of that energy with a wider audience.’
Thanks to the Emma Effect, Burberry was indeed reaching a wider audience. Since she first became involved the brand had seen profits jump by 23 per cent, in-store sales were up by 16 per cent and the company now had a million followers on Facebook. Financial website This Is Money believed they knew why Burberry was on the up: ‘The girl it has to thank, apparently, is the magical Miss Emma Watson,’ the site stated. ‘
Fresh-faced
, quietly confident, and world-famous thanks to her role in the Harry Potter films, she has seen the firm’s fortunes skyrocket since she starred in its advertising campaigns. That 2008 memory of former soap star and cocaine addict Daniella Westbrook kitted out
head-to-toe
in Burberry check – a moment which saw demand
for the design plummet – can now be filed away under corporate nightmares.’
But some commentators saw a big gap between, on the one hand, Emma and the bright young things pictured in the ads pouting in their ultra-expensive trench coats and, on the other, what regular teenagers would be likely to afford.
Daily Mail
columnist Karen Wheeler clucked her disapproval when the ads appeared: ‘Emma is beautiful. She is also clever – she’s a student at an Ivy League university in the US – but would she persuade me to buy a Burberry raincoat? The answer is “No”. In fact, every time I see the pictures of the actress looking at the camera with a vaguely sullen expression and just a hint of contempt, it makes me not want to buy Burberry. The problem is partly one of credibility. Emma is not long out of her school uniform (albeit a Hogwarts one), while the woman who can afford to spend £800 on a Burberry mac is likely to be in her 40s. Emma looks unconvincing. You just know she’d be much happier dressed in a denim mini, flip-flops and a camisole, like other teens. There has always been a credibility gap in fashion advertising between the women who can afford to wear the clothes and the skinnier, more youthful models who advertise them.’
Emma would soon provide a neat response to detractors who claimed she was out of touch when her ‘eco-fashion’ range of clothes was unveiled. The ‘Love From Emma’ collection was created with Fair Trade fashion label People Tree, set up by Safia Minney, who’d recently been awarded an MBE. The clothes were handmade from organic Fair Trade cotton and helped create jobs in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Emma was very much the driving force behind the range. She was keen to point out that she hadn’t merely allowed People Tree to use her name, though the link up came about by accident. ‘It was all because my friend, Alex Nicholls, was wearing this great People Tree T-shirt one day, which I liked. He then told me all about the company – he knows Safia and said that I should meet her. He set up an introduction and Safia and I just clicked. A couple of weeks later, she got in touch with the idea of a teen range – they were doing older ranges and baby clothes but nothing in between – and asked if I’d like to help put it together. I said yes straight away. I wanted to help People Tree produce a younger range because I was excited by the idea of using fashion as a tool to alleviate poverty and knew it was something I could help make a difference with. I think young people like me are becoming increasingly aware of the humanitarian issues surrounding fast fashion and want to make good choices, but there aren’t many options out there.’
Emma claimed she essentially designed the kind of clothes she liked to wear. Some of the tops included slogans such as ‘Don’t Panic, I’m Organic’. ‘I have been very heavily involved in the design side, but I don’t want to take credit for being a designer as I haven’t trained as a designer,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to art college and I didn’t want this collection to be about me, and this is not an Emma Watson clothing line. This is not a celebrity endorsement. This is something I thought was a really great idea and I wanted to help with. I just thought fashion was a great way to help people.’
Photoshoots for the clothes weren’t quite on the scale of the Burberry extravaganzas. Young Brit photographer Andrea Carter-Bowman was drafted in to keep things youthful and Emma got friends and family in to do the modelling in Sussex – brother Alex was there along with Emma’s old schoolfriend Sophie Sumner. She was a fellow Headingtonian who, like Emma, had been signed up by the Storm modelling agency. She’d even shared Emma’s north London flat when she’d moved out of Oxford the previous year. ‘It’s been really nice to be on the other side of the camera for once,’ Emma told
People Tree
magazine. ‘I’ve really enjoyed the styling, planning where we were going to have the shoot, choosing the models, hair and makeup. I chose the location as it had so much within it. There is an orchard, there is a place to have a tea party, there’s a swing, beautiful scenery, a lake, plants and flowers. Everything, really, even a vegetable garden. It is the perfect idyllic British summer house, which is what I wanted. The clothes are very British. It’s very strawberries and cream and tennis.’
‘She worked so, so hard,’ Sophie Sumner said. ‘After working 13 hours filming, she would get home and sit down and get her designs done.’
The range allowed fashion writers to polish off the usual Potter-related puns. The collection was, according to the
Daily Telegraph
, ‘ethical attire that will put a spell on you’. The
Mail on Sunday
was even keener: ‘Emma weaves her fashion magic … People Tree has some serious fashion cred. Never before has clothing with a conscience felt quite so on trend.’
The Times
took the whole thing a little more
seriously: ‘What Watson provides is an understanding that a bit of Hollister jersey blended into American Apparel basics, and topped off with humorous slogans, will mean that these clothes can transcend their worthy beginnings – and just become cool.’