Katie Leung said publicists told her to deny racist abuse from the "Harry Potter " fandom.- Leung starred as Cho Chang in the hugely popular franchise.
- "I remember reading all the comments. And, yeah, it was a lot of racist s---," she said.
The "Harry Potter" actor Katie Leung says publicists advised her to deny being the target of online racist abuse from the franchise's fans.
Leung, a Scottish-born performer of Chinese descent, was cast in the role of Cho Chang in the hugely popular franchise at age 16 and starred in four films including "The Order of The Phoenix," where she was Harry Potter's love interest.
Now 33 and speaking during a recent episode of the "Chinese Chippy Girl" podcast, Leung said when she was first cast in the "Harry Potter" films she discovered several fan-dedicated websites where users shared abusive and racist messages about her.
"I was, like, Googling myself at one point, and I was on this website, which was kind of dedicated to the kind of 'Harry Potter' fandom. I remember reading all the comments. And, yeah, it was a lot of racist s---," Leung said. "Somebody had actually created a website, a hate site. It was like, if you disagree with this casting, click on this button, and it was like a count of who disagreed with the casting. It's so awful."
Leung said that she was not provided any media training to prepare for interviews and that when she approached her publicists about the online racist abuse they told her they had never seen such websites and advised her to deny their existence too.
"I remember them saying to me: 'Oh, look, Katie, we haven't seen these, these websites that people are talking about. And, you know, if you get asked that, just say it's not true, say it's not happening,'" she said. "And I just nodded my head. I was like, 'OK, OK,' even though I had seen it myself with my own eyes. I was like, 'OK, yeah, I'll just say everything's great.'"
She added: "During that time, it was the kind of rise of the internet and fandoms and all that sort of stuff. Because I'm 16 and a teenager, I care what people think as it is in school, never mind what the whole world thinks. There was a lot of pressure there. I was so caught up in caring about what people thought of me."
It's unclear whether the publicists worked for Leung personally or Warner Bros., which produced the franchise and continues to produce the "Fantastic Beasts" spin-off. The studio did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Leung, who has gone on to star in films including "T2 Trainspotting," said that she was "really very f---ing grateful" to be involved in the film franchise but that her experience "wasn't great."
In 2016 during an interview with The Herald newspaper, Leung detailed similar racist abuse from "Potter" fans and said that the only way she was able to deal with the messages was to ignore them.
"I put it to the back of my mind. I don't know if that is the best way to deal with it, but that is naturally what I did in order to move on and be a good actor," she said.
"I was being judged purely on my looks because she" - Cho Chang - "is supposed to be a very beautiful girl. This all happened before the films even came out. I thought: 'Well, I can't do anything about the way I look, so I'm going to need to do the best acting to make up for it.'"