What happens after kissing Harry Potter?
Scottish-born actress battles ‘casual racism,’ ‘ignorance’ on screen and off
When Katie Leung gets into a taxi, drivers sometimes say to her: “Wow, you speak very good English.” It is hardly a compliment to someone born in Dundee who attended private school in Lanarkshire, but it is the type of response she regularly encounters. So why the assumption that this thoroughly British 28-year-old will not speak much English?
That would be her mixed heritage: Her father, Peter, runs a wholesale company in Glasgow, while her mother, Kar Wai Li, is a successful Hong Kong financier. The two divorced when Leung was three.
Cue all sorts of “casual racism” levelled at her from various quarters. “It really irks me,” she admits. “It is just ignorance. It is something that needs to be addressed.”
Having more English-speaking Asian actresses on our screens would be a good start, she suggests. Leung is playing her part, but in her view it’s not enough. Famed for beating 3,000 girls to the role of Harry Potter’s girlfriend, Cho Chang, in the film franchise of J.K. Rowling’s children’s books, she is yet to play an Amanda or a Rachel in anything.
Her next acting role, in One Child, the new BBC Two thriller written by Guy Hibbert, sees her play Mei, a Chinese-born girl given up for adoption to Anglo-American parents because of China’s controversial one-child policy.
“It is (about) a more truthful representation on our screens, so people see a Chinese person speaking English and won’t come to the assumption that people of colour don’t,” says Leung.
The casting landscape is improving, she says, but she worries not enough young Asian girls are considering the acting profession for fear they will be typecast in peripheral, Asian-centric roles.
The mass attention of Harry Potter fandom came as a hideous shock in 2005 after her first performance in Goblet of Fire. Her part in the films saw her subjected to “I Hate Katie” websites set up by maladjusted Potter fans, jealous of her onscreen kiss with the actor Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the boy wizard. There were also racist online messages.
The fallout contributed to Leung’s quick (though temporary) exit from acting. She threw herself into a photography course at Edinburgh College of Art, and that might well have been that. But the bug never really left her, and shortly before graduating in 2011, she won a part in Wild Swans at the Young Vic, the first stage adaptation of the Jung Chang bestselling novel.
After winning plaudits for this, she enrolled in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to hone her skills with a three-year acting course, in the midst of which she was cast in Channel 4’s miniseries Run. The role landed her a Breakthrough Brit award at the BAFTAs in 2014. Despite her best efforts, success seems to hang on to her coat-tails.
It is a success she wears lightly. Softly spoken, and a self-confessed introvert, she is often happiest drinking wine, watching films and playing video games from the comfortable confines of her sofa in Glasgow, alongside her boyfriend Eric. At school, she says, she was a “teacher’s pet.”
But her self-effacing manner belies her steely views.
Her Twitter feed is alive with posts on issues of race and diversity in TV. As a flag-bearer for fairer casting, she is understandably excited by Swaziland-born Noma Dumezweni’s role as Hermione in the forthcoming stage adaptation of the Harry Potter saga.
“It is wonderful,” she says. “So exciting. You do find out when you are on social media that the majority of people are incredibly supportive. There are just one or two who, yeah?” She trails off.
She might mean to finish the sentence with “tear you to pieces,” but she is too discreet.