'Harry Potter' star Bonnie Wright says she was disappointed by her lack of screen time in the franchise
- Bonnie Wright spoke about her role as Ginny Weasley in the "Harry Potter" movies.
- Wright said it was "a little disappointing" that Ginny didn't get as much screen time.
"Harry Potter" star Bonnie Wright said that her character Ginny Weasley's lack of screen time in the franchise was "a little bit disappointing."
"I definitely feel there was anxiety towards performing and doing the best thing as my character built, for instance," Wright said on the latest episode of Michael Rosenbaum's podcast, "Inside of You."
"Like, 'Oh gosh, will I do justice to this character that people love?'" she continued. "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."
The first installment of the movie franchise based on J.K. Rowling's fantasy novels, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," was released in 2001.
Wright was 9 when she filmed the first movie. At the time, she had no clue that her character would end up marrying the titular wizard because all the books in the series hadn't come out yet.
Like most film adaptations of books, the "HP" movies couldn't incorporate everything from the novels. That resulted in fewer opportunities for Wright to showcase the complexities of her character on-screen, though her character did become more prominent as the movies progressed.
"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," she said. That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess."
Wright also said that there were no conversations with producers about Ginny being more involved in the films because "there was no room for much change in those scripts."
"There were a million executives going through them all," she said. "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."
In a franchise filled with plenty of characters, many fans have said that Ginny was underutilized in the movies.
"When fans do share that disappointment and they do it in a way that is like, 'We know it wasn't you. We just wanted more of you.' And that's the same of every character. If only they could be five-hour-long movies."