The “Harry Potter” franchise could have looked very differently if Emma Watson had ducked out about halfway through, as she considered doing.
Emma, with her co-stars, skyrocketed to fame at a very young age in 2001 when they first appeared in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
While Emma and her co-stars have risked their early stardom into successful careers in Hollywood, it was not an easy go for them.
Emma,31, is set to appear in HBO Max’s upcoming “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” special, which will see Emma and others involved with the franchise recall their time working together.
Director David Yates mentioned in the reunion that Watson considered leaving the “Harry Potter” franchise shortly after he agreed to direct “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
“I think I was scared,” Watson says in the special, recalling an old diary entry in which she mentioned feeling lonely, per People magazine. “I don’t know if you ever felt like it got to a tipping point where you were like, ‘This is kind of forever now.”
Watson added: “The fame thing had finally hit home in a big way.”
Tom Felton, another actor from the franchise, said how Watson handled the change.
He added, “People definitely forget what she took on and how gracefully she did it.”
He also noted that Watson did not have anyone to depend on while filming the movies, as Watson was “not only younger, but she was by herself.”
Daniel Radcliffe, who starred in the movie, added: “We never talked about it on the film because we were all just kids.”
He explained: “As a 14-year-old boy, I was never going to turn around to another 14-year-old and be like, ‘Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay?”
However, Watson was not the only star who wanted to leave the iconic franchise, as Rupert Grint also thought about it at several points.
“I had moments like that kind of all the way through,” he admitted. “I also had similar feelings to Emma, kind of contemplating what life would be like if I called it a day, but we never really spoke about it. I guess we were just kind of going through it at our own pace. We were kind of in the moment at the time. It just didn’t occur to us that we were all having similar feelings.”
From 1 January, “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” will be on HBO Max for streaming.