Credit: Warner Bros. It has long been debated whether the Harry Potter films are faithful adaptations of the seven books by JK Rowling. Compared to most other franchises developed from books, one could easily make the case that Harry Potter is as faithful as they get.
However, fans often complain that the eight films omit a great deal from the books, despite it being near impossible to translate a book to screen word for word or page for page without keeping audiences stuck in their seats for several hours at a time.
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That’s not to say that the Harry Potter films don’t leave out some key subplots and character arcs, much to the frustration of fans who are particularly precious of the source material. But overall, the film series can hardly be accused of being incoherent.
Nevertheless, now that Warner Bros. has announced a more “faithful” Harry Potter reboot in the form of a HBO series that will run for seven seasons, each one based on a single book, fans are now hoping that the books will finally get the treatment they feel they deserve.
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And they aren’t alone in thinking that the films don’t spend enough time on certain characters, among many other things. One actress from the Harry Potter films, Bonnie Wright, recently talked about her experience in how the films left a lot out from the books.
Wright, 32, is best known for playing the youngest of the Weasley siblings, Ginny Weasley, in all eight Harry Potter films: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1 (2010), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 (2011).
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In a recent interview on the Inside of You podcast, opposite host Michael Rosenbaum, Wright opened up about her experience with anxiety while playing Ginny Weasley in the films, explaining that there was a lot of pressure for her to deliver a performance to fans of the books, despite several scenes from the books not making it to film.
“I definitely feel there was anxiety towards performing and doing the best thing as my character built, for instance,” she said. ” 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.”
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Wright also talked about how there were several executives going through the scripts and how there was little room for change.
“There was no room for much change in those scripts. 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 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.”
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We don’t know how Bonnie Wright feels about the upcoming Harry Potter reboot, but it sounds like she’d at least be on board for the series being spread across seven seasons to ensure no vital storylines or character arcs are missed this time around.
With that said, the actress did say in a 2021 interview with People, when asked about the possibility of a reunion-style film such as the long-rumored Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, that the series should be left alone. Here’s what she said:
“I would hope that they keep it as it was. I think it’s like a time capsule, and [if] you open it and it changes and everything feels kind of different… For sure, I miss playing Ginny, but I always quite like the idea that it’s properly compacted into those seven years at Hogwarts.”
In a resurfaced interview with Digital Spy from 2012, several actors from the films went on record to express their disapproval of the possibility of Harry Potter rebooted.
There’s no release date for the Harry Potter reboot.
Are you looking forward to seeing more character development in the HBO Harry Potter series? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!