Emma Watson
‘I often wonder what mischief I can make to spread feminism in a playful way. You can’t take everything in life seriously, can you?’ – Emma Watson
The modern activist talks literature and feminism with Lorraine Candy
EMMA WATSON HAS HAD A YEAR OFF – BUT NOT THE KIND of year off you or I might have, more a Hermione-style one. During her break, Emma has done the following (brace yourself, it’s a long list): visited Malawi with UN Women, given several high-profile speeches on gender equality, interviewed feminist activists and actresses for various publications and websites, met with the coolest of PMs, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, to take part in the One Young World youth-leadership conference (and secretly toured Toronto on the back of the first lady’s Vespa). She’s guest-edited Esquire with Tom Hanks, attended the Davos gathering to launch a gender-parity report, beat-boxed with the musical Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda as part of the UN’s HeForShe campaign, taken part in the World’s Largest Lesson for the Global Goals movement, worked with Eco-Age on how to dress more sustainably, and launched her own book club, Our Shared Shelf, with a series of one-to-one interviews with authors including Caitlin Moran and Gloria Steinem ( just imagine the research you’d have to do before meeting any of that lot). Oh, and she’s also read 46 books – almost one a week – and the year hasn’t even finished when we meet to chat in Manhattan.
‘Crikey,’ I say, ‘that sounds exhausting. Couldn’t you have just gone to a few spas? I mean, what were you trying to prove?’ Emma laughs. I have to wait for her reply, because she’s quaffing a giant piece of chocolate cake and an accompanying glass of red wine.
‘It wasn’t about me necessarily proving anything,’ she says with a smile. ‘I was just thinking that I have this year to myself, so let’s see what we can do to move the needle and make a difference.’
In truth, I’d expect nothing less of Emma, who I first encountered when she was on the cover of the August 2009 edition of ELLE UK. She was 19 and at the beginning of her post-Harry Potter journey. For a while, ‘Em’, as her friends call her, fought to prove she was nothing like Hermione, but then, with ever-increasing and impressive emotional
maturity, she realised she and her wizard alter ego actually had a lot in common, from their studiously perfectionist tendencies to their need to ‘do the right thing’. Now 26, there is what I call a ‘controlled curiosity’ about Emma, an attractive quality in a woman who truly realises and values the huge influence she wields in an uncertain world.
She was never going to waste a year off pottering about at home, though she does love her London and New York flats and is, by her own admission, ‘a fanatical nester’. ‘I’m the kind of person who needs 24 hours where I don’t see another living thing,’ she says.
I have been consistently intrigued by Emma since our first meeting. She is an extremely private person, yet was willing to expose herself for feminism, a cause she strongly believes in, weathering some brutal personal criticism along the way. Sometimes this level of serious activism can endow a famous face with a rather earnest persona. In Emma’s case, it risks giving a one-dimensional view of the actress, who is more complex, and indeed fun, than the sum of her campaign work.
LAST TIME WE MET, TWO YEARS AGO, WE WALKED through Central Park the day after her historic and statesman-like HeForShe genderequality speech at the UN HQ, which I’d witnessed. It was a heartfelt plea to engage men in the battle for equality, which reached 1.7 million people on YouTube alone and made global front-page news.
She was understandably, but subtly, euphoric. The speech was a success, but Emma was mature enough to be mindful of appearing to be an expert on a subject she was still learning about. She’s come a long way since then. She has, indeed, ‘moved the needle’.
For such a shy person, Emma is an enthusiastic hugger, and this always takes me by surprise when we meet. Friends describe her as fiercely loyal, and she pays special attention to anything that involves family, often kindly pointing out to me, a mum of four, new facts or statistics she’s read on why working mothers shouldn’t feel guilty. This is endearing. Half the celebrities I interview barely remember my name, let alone the fact I have kids.
This time we meet to talk about her feminist book club and her new film, the Disney blockbuster Beauty and the Beast, a luscious musical retelling of the fairytale, out in March. The trailer has become the most-viewed teaser ever, with more than 127 million views in the first 24 hours after its release. Emma has a ‘killer singing voice’, as someone who has seen an unedited version of the film tells me. Beauty, which also stars Dan Stevens and Luke Evans, was filmed the year after HeForShe, and Emma refers to it as ‘princess boot camp’. She learned to ride, as well as having intensive waltzing and singing lessons.
‘For me, Beauty was the perfect, most joyful thing to do after a heavy year,’ she says. ‘It felt very “full circle”, because the day we finished filming was the anniversary of the day 15 years before that I’d been cast for Harry Potter. There was something connected about Hermione and Belle, and it was good to be reminded that I am an actress; this is what I do. This film is pure escapism, which came before my year off.’
And what a year – one in which she acknowledges she has grown up.
‘It really toughened me up,’ she explains. ‘There is a level of criticism that comes with being an actress and a public figure, which I expect, but once you take a stance on something like feminism, that’s a completely different ball game. There were a couple of days when I just didn’t want to come out from under the duvet. At first I wasn’t sure if I should allow myself to be upset by it, but then I realised I needed to give myself 24 hours to sulk, and then move forward. I got a lot of support from other feminist voices, too. Laura Bates [of Everyday Sexism] sent me a care package with sequins and glitter, notes of encouragement and chocolate, which more or less said, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” I had to remind myself that the criticism wasn’t personal and it was par for the course.’
Perhaps the most difficult were the attacks from other feminists, who suggested the campaign positioned men as saviours of women, and blasted Emma for speaking from the ‘privileged position of a rich white woman’. ‘It’s difficult to hear criticism from people you consider your peers and who you believe are on the same side. But, you know, I just carried on, and some of the stuff made me more thoughtful and questioning of my approach. But some of it you just have to not engage with, and you become more robust. And, of course, sometimes you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Feminism can be humorous, and we all have a different way of approaching that. I often wonder what mischief I can make to spread the word in a playful way. You can’t take everything in life seriously, can you?’
Last November, as part of her book-club project, Emma left copies of Maya Angelou’s final book, Mom & Me & Mom, in tube stations all over London, and then across the New York subway the day after Donald Trump was elected. She posted pictures of her ‘book ninja’ antics on her Instagram. ‘People are so busy
looking at their phones that no one noticed me,’ recalls the star, who is usually swamped by Harry Potter fans every time she leaves a building.
Emma’s Our Shared Shelf, on the Goodreads website, is an informative list of great books – both new and old – that every woman should read, discussed by members in a useful way. The power of book clubs is undoubtedly huge. Oprah’s Book Club saw many obscure titles becoming bestsellers, with sales in some cases increasing by as many as several million copies.
I’d asked Emma to recommend books that had moved her during her year off so that we could discuss them, and the list she supplies is mainly made up of women like Maya Angelou, who’ve been fearless, even reckless, in their life journeys. I ask her if this is something she seeks. ‘I gravitate towards these women,’ she says. ‘I am trying to figure out their secret, because I don’t think I’m fearless, but I try to push through to being it. It isn’t effortless for me.’
I say I think perhaps fearlessness comes from not caring what people think about you, but Emma thoughtfully corrects me: ‘I’m not sure I care too much now what people think; it’s more I don’t live up to my own expectations. This is exhausting. I certainly feel that, after this year off, I care much less about offending people or trying to make everyone around me comfortable all the time. You know, sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and you will live.’
Aside from Angelou’s Mom & Me & Mom, there is Gloria Steinem’s autobiographical My Life on the Road; Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Persepolis; the critically acclaimed Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; Caitlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman; Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and finally, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, about the experience of building a trans relationship and queer family.
Emma says she chose Persepolis because her grandparents spent time in Iran and her father was born there. ‘I had a sense of connection with that book and it paints a larger picture of feminism around the world,’ she explains.
Half the Sky: How to Change the World is a journey through Africa and Asia, meeting women in poverty-stricken situations, many of them sex workers. It’s a harsh but informative read, and one Emma admits to dipping in and out of because ‘it really affected me emotionally’.
I ask Emma if she would consider writing a book, knowing she has been approached to do so, particularly around feminism. She has 12 journals she’s kept over the years but, wisely, says she thinks she will save her writing for later in life, acknowledging it’s a craft that takes time to learn, and Emma would do something only if she could do it well.
‘I need to see and do a bit more first. It’s not like I have been reading this material for years and I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge. It can be a lot of pressure sometimes, as people expect me to know so much. I’m no expert, and when people push me into a corner of “here’s Emma Watson to lecture you on feminism”, it’s uncomfortable because I am aware I have a long way to go. I am not sure I deserve all the respect I get yet, but I’m working on it.’
And one can sense there is enormous pressure on Emma to be knowledgeable, as someone in the full glare of the new feminist spotlight. She will no doubt meet Trump this year as part of her UN Women work – and what book would she give him, I ask. ‘Probably bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody,’ she says, ‘as it’s simple, well argued and reasonable.’
Right now, she is reading the extraordinary but unusual Nights at the Circus by the late Angela Carter, but I ask her if she ever dips into anything as fluffy as Jilly Cooper?
‘Of course,’ she giggles. And she tells me she is drawn to self-help literature, something I did not expect to hear. ‘I love it. I will get really excited reading something like Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution. I am a sucker for anything that promises to change my life.’
No conversation about feminist books is complete without asking the interviewee about their favourite love story. For Emma, who has studied all manner of historic romantic literature, at both Brown and Oxford universities, it is a surprising choice: Just Kids, the evocative New York memoir of punk poetess Patti Smith’s lifelong love affair with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. ‘I adored the idea that their love was like a ship that always needed balancing, and their affair transcended a sexual relationship and lasted right to the death. It was so ahead of its time.’
It’s good to discover a softer side to Emma, and it’s something I suspect we’ll be seeing more of as she grows in confidence heading towards her thirties. She seems less serious this time round and there is a growing lightness to her manner that shines a hopeful light on the future of our feminist role models.
Beauty and the Beast is out on 17 March; join Our Shared Shelf at goodreads.com