Thursday 31 August 2023

Deadline: ‘Harry Potter’ Star Bonnie Wright Laments Ginny Weasley’s Lack Of Screen Time In The Franchise’s Films

Story from Deadline:

Ginny Weasley was measly in the “Harry Potter” film franchise. At least when it came to lines, said Bonnie Wright, the woman who played the character.

Wright, now 32, was just 9 years old when she was cast as Ginny Weasley, the sister of Ron Weasley (played by Rupert Grint in the films) and future wife of Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe).

On Tuesday’s episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s “Inside of You” podcast, Wright expressed disappointment that Ginny was not more prominent in the films.

“I definitely feel there was anxiety toward performing and doing the best thing as my character built,” 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. 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.

“That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess.”

Wright was gifted one line in the first film, 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Wright initially didn’t have any lines.

“The actual first line I had in the film, which was one line, was given to me on the day, [and director Chris Columbus] was like, ‘I think you need a line,’ which is my ‘good luck’ to Harry,” she said. “I actually read Hermione lines because they didn’t have any other scenes for me to read, so they were like, ‘You’re just going to have to read this character.'”

There were no conversations with producers about Ginny being more involved. That’s because “There was no room for much change in those scripts.” Wright said, “There were a million executives going through them all. 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.”

Fans join Wright in feeling that more Ginny was needed.

“When fans do share that disappointment… they do it in a way that is like, ‘We know it wasn’t you. We just wanted more of you,'” Wright said. “And that’s the same of every character. If only they could be five-hour-long movies.”

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