Bonnie Wright Says Ginny Weasley’s Lack of Screen Time in ‘Harry Potter’ Films Made Her ‘Anxious and Frustrated’: ‘That Was a Little Disappointing’
On the latest episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s “Inside of You” podcast (via Insider), “Harry Potter” actor Bonnie Wright admitted that her character’s lack of screen time in the Warner Bros. film franchise was “a little bit disappointing.” Wright played Ginny Weasley across the eight “Harry Potter” movies, and she was just 9 years old when she filmed “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Little did she know then that Ginny Weasley would become a prominent supporting character and the wife of Harry Potter in the books.
“I definitely feel there was anxiety toward performing and doing the best thing as my character built, for instance,” Wright 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.”
More from Variety
“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,” she continued. “That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess.”
Wright never griped to the producers about Ginny’s role being reduced in the translation from book to screen. The actor said “there was no room for much change in those scripts.”
“There were a million executives going through them all,” Wright explained. “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 realizing that I wasn’t really given the opportunity to do that. So it wasn’t really my fault, exactly.”
“When fans do share that disappointment and they do it in a way that is like, ‘We know it wasn’t you. We just wanted more of you,'” she added. “And that’s the same of every character. If only they could be five-hour-long movies.”
Ginny Weasley is surely going to be a more fleshed out character in Max’s upcoming television adaptation of the “Harry Potter” novels, where each season will cover an entire book.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
