The Harry Potter films are a lot of fun for both the fans of the books, as well as those who’ve only picked up on the movies, but one thing the books fans can all agree on is that the movies left a whole lot out! The books (especially from #4 on) are very rich in character and story, and the movies could only capture the main points. Some plots, conversations, background goings on, and character development just ended up on the cutting room floor to make these movies’ runtime palatable for moviegoers.
One character that seemingly got the shaft developmentally was Ginny Weasley. Bonnie Wright, who played the lone Weasley sister in the films, recently sat down with Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, where she expressed disappointment that Ginny was not more prominent in the films, saying:
“I definitely feel there was anxiety toward performing and doing the best thing as my character built. Like, Oh gosh, will I do justice to this character that people love? 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. 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. That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess.”
Wright was gived one line in the first film, 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Wright initially didn’t have any lines.
“The actual first line I had in the film, which was one line, was given to me on the day, [and director Chris Columbus] was like, ‘I think you need a line,’ which is my ‘good luck’ to Harry. I actually read Hermione lines because they didn’t have any other scenes for me to read, so they were like, ‘You’re just going to have to read this character.’”
There were no conversations with producers about Ginny being more involved. That’s because, “There was no room for much change in those scripts.” Wright said:
“There were a million executives going through them all. 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.”
Fans join Wright in feeling that more Ginny was needed.
“When fans do share that disappointment… 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.”
I guess that’s the problem that MAX’s new Harry Potter series will try to address. Although I wish the original film characters could have had the luxury of really playing these characters more in depth because the casting in those films was truly perfect. But I trust the creators of the series will also bring us something equally as magical. Are you looking forward to the new show based on the books?
via: Deadline