The Student Guide journeys to The May Fair Hotel to hear the Harry Potter star chat about her latest film The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
One of the things that we all know about here, is that coming of age isn’t easy. And it must be a darned sight harder coming of age in the public eye. At the age of just 22, Emma Watson is sitting comfortably on Forbes’ list of the highest earning youngsters and has enough money never to have to work again. Despite that, she’s tried her hardest to carry on life as normal and live her adolescence behind closed doors, making the transformation from child star to mature young woman beautifully. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an apt choice for one of her first projects away from the Potter clan; it deals with the delicate matter of growing up with an intensity and a light-heartedness which can only really come from having the book’s author as its director.
Through a series of letters to an anonymous reader, the story follows its narrator Charlie (Logan Lerman) as he starts as a freshman at a new school just several months after his best friend Michael has committed suicide. Emma Watson plays Charlie’s love interest and muse Sam and she is, actually, magnificent...
The Perks of Being a Wallflower [Perks] reminded me of classics like The Breakfast Club. Do you think that’s what Stephen [Chbosky – author and director] was aiming for?
Definitely. When we first met, he had this bible of ideas from the book and he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot every shot. There were tons of John Hughes references in there. He really wanted it to feel quirky and real, but for there to also be something timeless and classic about it. And that’s why he didn’t go too far on the late 80s early 90s garb - it was there but he didn’t go crazy on it.
Did you watch films such as The Breakfast Club to prepare you?
I watched Dazed and Confused, Harold and Maude, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. I watched them all, partly for accent and partly just for feel.
Did you read the book or the script first?
I read the script first and the book second, and my American friend berated me for it. They said “you’re so far behind, how can you not have read this amazing book?” And so I got on it very quickly and did read it and what I realised is that there’s this amazing cult following who really really care about it. I was in Pittsburgh and this girl came up to me; she had a tattoo of one of Steve’s quotes and that was when I realised that this was kind of a big deal.
It’s been amazing and it’s nice to know that we can’t go too far wrong having the author directing the film. It’s obviously not exactly the same as the book – adaptations never can be, but the spirit is authentic.
Does it make a difference having the author as the director?
Definitely. If I was ever stuck in a scene and I needed help in finding a particular moment, it was amazing to have Steve tell me about that specific moment in his life and how it impacted him and what he felt that line was about – it was incredibly moving to hear him talk about what it all meant to him. I feel spoilt really – going into my future films, I’ll be all “excuse me, where is the author of the script? I need to speak to him personally”.
Is there a real Sam?
There is. I didn’t meet her but there is a real Sam. Perhaps Steve kept us both apart...
This is a coming of age film and you obviously had your coming of age in the public eye. How did that inform your performance?
I don’t know how having my coming of age in the public eye informed my performance, in fact I think it was the opposite really – the life I had outside the public eye helped to inform my performance as Sam more. I tried my best to live my adolescence behind closed doors as far as I possibly could. And I think I managed that – I went back to school in between filming, I sat my GCSEs and my A Levels, I went to uni – so it’s really those experiences which informed her.
You’re in the privileged position of having been educated both here and in America. What are the major differences?
In America, you have four years to complete your degree whereas in England you have three, although we encourage a gap year. The biggest difference is that an American education encourages you to broaden yourself out and to specialise later, whereas in England we’re encouraged to make decisions about our career and what sort of field we want to go into a lot younger. So even as early as our GCSEs in this country, if you want to go into Medicine for example, you need to choose to take Chemistry and Biology. In America I was able to take four classes a semester and they could be in whatever I wanted as long as I formed some sort of concentration out of them .So I’m majoring in English Literature but I took classes in Psychology, History, Art, French – all sorts. So I think that was one of the appeals for me - I knew that my degree wasn’t going to be a vocational degree but I wanted to know as much as I could about as many different things as possible.
Is it right that you told your agent “don’t send me scripts” while you were studying?
I did - Perks somehow made it under the door! My agent said “I really think you should read this one”, and I had been reading things but Perks was the first one to light a fire under me. I thought “it’s really important to make this film – this could really make a difference to a young person.”’ It felt quite special.
Was it the story, the character or the subject matter which attracted you to it?
There’s so much material made about this period in people’s lives that I think people are kind of sick of hearing about it. But this one felt really honest and authentic - it didn’t glamorise the experience, but it didn’t patronise it or sensationalise it either. It looked at it in a very honest way. Plus it isn’t afraid to touch on subjects which are difficult; that was one of the difficulties in getting the film made, because it deals with things that people would rather not talk about – taboo subjects. It’s one of the most banned books in America – there are many many state libraries that just won’t stock it.
Did you at any point during the making of the film feel that you’d lost out on your own coming of age?
It made me very aware that my life has been very different – it’s definitely been unusual. I’d almost say that my life has been done backwards. At times that’s felt lonely, but generally I feel privileged to have had so many different experiences. Really the film made me happy because I realised that I had been doing something for almost half of my life that I wanted to continue doing – I really loved making the film and I really love acting and it’s what I want to do, so it made me quite grateful to realise that I have a platform which allows me to do that in the way that I want to. Plus it was happy because I got to have a lot of the experiences that I didn’t get to have in an even more exotic way because I got to go to the football games, and I don’t know many English girls that got to go to Prom...
Music plays a big part in the film. What sort of music do you like and how big a part does it play in your life?
One of the first things that Steve did when he met me was to give me a mixtape, and throughout the movie we as a cast all made music together. I sing, Ezra plays the drums, Logan plays the piano, Mae Whitman is musical. So all of us, most nights would sit and play music. And when we did the tunnel scene we did actually have music playing. It’s not very often on a movie set that you get music – they generally put in the music later. But Steve insisted that all four of us together chose a song that we would go through the tunnel listening to.
Given your unique upbringing, was there anything in the film that you could identify with?
I have a step brother called David who reminded me a lot of my relationship with Patrick in the film. We’re the same age; we sat our GCSEs together and we sat our A Levels together and we very much gave each other moral support during that time.
And I have some really great close friends. I don’t know who this quote is by but it says ‘the friends that you have who you can call at 3 in the morning, are the ones that really count’. And I’m lucky that I’ve got a few of those and they’re great so I just drew on the people who believe in me and who lift me up.
Have you got a favourite scene from the film?
Experience wise, I love the tunnel scene because I love remembering what it was like to do it; it was incredible, I felt like I was flying. But the scene that I loved reading when I read the script was the scene where Sam wants to give Charlie the perfect first kiss because her first kiss sucked and a lot of peoples’ first kisses aren’t great – it’s not always how you picture things. I just thought it was so beautiful that she wanted to make sure it was perfect, and that really touched me. I was very proud of that scene.
There are so many lines in the film which take you on an emotional journey – sometimes from laughing at the start of a sentence to crying at the end of it. Was it a different experience to the films you’ve done previously?
It was a much smaller crew and budget – my two biggest scenes we shot in one day. The scenes that I consider to be the most emotional and difficult (the one where I kiss Charlie and the scene at the end of the film on the night before I’m about to leave); we shot all of that in one day. On the Harry Potter films, I was used to us shooting one sequence in a period of three weeks. So it was nerve-wracking for Steve to give me one or two takes. So I had to really have a lot of faith in him and trust that it was all going to work out okay. It’s nice working with a smaller group of people because you really band together and everyone is very involved – and we had to be with this film because we worked such crazy hours on it. By the end of the movie I was so tired that I wasn’t functioning properly as a result of so many night shoots, but it was also very exhilarating.
Hold fire for our review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is on its way as we speak...
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