Emma Watson didn’t hold back when sitting down for her first major interview in years.
The Harry Potter alum made a surprise appearance on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast on Wednesday, September 24, discussing everything from her decision to step back from the public eye to where her relationship with controversial author J.K. Rowling stands today.
“I’ll never say that I’ll quit acting,” Watson, 35, said during the episode. “I’ll always be an actor. I’m still open to doing it again.”
Watson last stepped in front of the camera six years ago, playing Meg March in 2019’s Little Women before taking a break from the spotlight. The actress rose to fame playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise from 2001 to 2011, but going to work after that experience wasn’t what she expected.
“Most people don’t come to those environments looking for friendships,” she recalled. “I found the rejection really painful. I think it was so unusual to make a set of films for 12 years, and we were a community.”
Watson said she felt “crazy” for walking away from a career that had “such a high value” — but it was something she had to do.
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from Watson’s interview:
Why She Stepped Away From Hollywood
The turning point in Watson’s career came while she was filming Beth March’s death sequence in Little Women.
“I realized I was drawing on painful stuff in my life that I was actually healing, and I didn’t want to keep revisiting in order to do some of the more intense, scarier, sadder things that I had to do,” she said. “I realized I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is super great for me actually to keep revisiting these,’ or if I want to use these as my tools.”
Watson also said one major thing shifted when she was working with new costars.
“I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I think I had developed on Harry Potter, which was that … the people I worked with were going to be my family, and that we were going to be lifelong friends,” she said. “I came to work looking for friendship, and that was a very painful experience for me outside of Harry Potter and in Hollywood.”
Watson said she got her “ass kicked” by the rejection of friendship on film sets. “It broke me,” she added, getting emotional.
Finding Friendships in Hollywood
Watson continued discussing her difficulties with Hollywood by further explaining the absence of real friendships.
“You always get asked when you are promoting these big films, like, ‘Do you guys hang out on set and are you all friends?’ And everyone sort of nods enthusiastically. But the truth is, no one has seen each other outside of work,” she admitted. “The schedule is insane. Everyone’s so tired that when they get any time off, you’re going straight back to your hotel room to try to claw in any piece of rest that you possibly can.”
She added, “Friendships require time and trust and presence, and those things very rarely come about. They can, and they do occasionally, but it’s more of a solar eclipse than an everyday situation.”
Hermione is all grown up! Since her early days as the wee wizard, Emma Watson’s spellbinding style has majorly evolved, making the award-winning actress a darling of the fashion set. Whether it’s a daring two-piece look or a glamorous gown, the Harry Potter star has more than come into her own.
The Truth About Red Carpets
Watson claimed “everything in your body says something’s wrong” at high-profile events because of the “sensory overload.”
“Even though you’re wearing an incredibly glamorous dress and you’re there to do something exciting, I don’t think there’s anything that can make it not weird that people are screaming at the top of their lungs,” she said. “You have to try to pretend as though this is all normal and you’re unfazed.”
She said it’s “basically impossible” to not feel like “an insane person” in those types of situations.
Becoming Hermione
Before auditioning for the role that made her famous, Watson was already a fan of Rowling’s book series.
“It wasn’t so much about acting so much as it was that I just the books meant so much to me personally,” she said. “I always felt like Hermione. I knew I was never auditioning for anything else, I knew it was her. I don’t know how to explain it. Something felt right about it.”
Who Is Emma Watson?
The actress admitted that she became an “avatar” of herself throughout her time in Hollywood.
“She’d become reproduced so many times over and and had become so loaded by all of this different stuff. She almost felt too heavy to carry. I was like, ‘I don’t even know if I can be that bitch anymore,’” Watson said, recalling a date that she went on where the guy said, “Emma Watson makes me anxious” — and she agreed.
“I can’t even be her,” she said. “I don’t know how to be her.”
Her Dating Life
Watson said it can be “dehumanizing” when she’s on a date and someone realizes who she is.
“Seeing someone’s behavior completely switch and turn and change can be a jarring experience,” she said. “I think what’s nice is, at the very least, dating for everyone is basically a complete disaster and free-for-all. I feel like I’m in good company, in that sense.”
Watson further claimed “we are being pressured” as a society into marriage.
“I’m just so happy not to be divorced yet. That sounds like a really negative answer,” she said. “I might never be worthy of it. I hope it happens to me, but I don’t feel entitled to it.”
Her Thoughts on J.K. Rowling
Watson spoke candidly about Rowling’s controversial comments over the years. (The Harry Potter author has frequently made headlines for transphobic remarks, with many of Watson’s costars taking a stand against the hateful comments.)
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, [it] means that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person I had personal experiences with,” she said. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish, to come back to our earlier thing.”
She added, “I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with. I think that’s a very, very important way for me that I need to be able to move through life.”
A number of Hollywood A-listers have spoken out in opposition of famed author J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans views. The Harry Potter author has made a number of anti-trans comments over the years, culminating in an April 2025 social media post in which she praised the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling that womanhood is legally defined by biological […]
What she’s “most upset” about was that there has seemingly been no attempt to have a conversation. Watson said she will “always” be open to talk.
“I just don’t want to say anything that continues to weaponize a really toxic debate and conversation, which is maybe why — well, it is why — I don’t comment or continue to comment,” she continued. “Not because I don’t care about her or about the issue, but because the way that the conversation is being had feels really painful to me.”
Watson said there’s “no world” in which she can ignore the impact of Rowling’s work.
“Her kindness and words of encouragement and that steadfastness … and also honestly, just as a young woman, for her to have written that character, created that world [and] given me an opportunity which, to be honest, barely exists in the history of English literature,” she said. “There’s just no world in which I could ever cancel her out or cancel that out for anything. It has to remain true.”
She added, “I can love her. I can know she loved me. I can be grateful to her. I can know the things that she said are true and there can be this whole other thing, and my job feels like to just hold all of it. But the bigger thing is just what she’s done will never be taken away from me.”
