Emma Watson Was Genuinely Upset When Her Most Disturbing Harry Potter Scene Was Cut
Who would’ve guessed the Hermione actress would prefer the final cut to include a two-minute-long scene of her being brutally tortured by the Death Eaters?
Quite often, the final version of the movie we see on our small or big screens is far from the director’s original vision. Several scenes are altered or cut entirely; some story arcs and details are removed; anything it takes to fit a movie into the length allowed by movie theaters, basically. And there rarely are official director’s cuts.
In the case of the Harry Potter movies, the situation was no different. A plethora of scenes were removed in the final versions of the films, including some absolutely iconic sequences the lack of which fans still can’t forgive. Other scenes were cut since they were considered too brutal for the younger audiences of the movies.
The one scene Emma Watson wishes was included in the final cut belonged to the latter group: it was the scene where Bellatrix tortured Hermione and carved up her skin with a knife. Initially, there was an actual scene there, and a pretty long one, too — but ultimately, David Yates had to remove it for being “too disturbing.”
Emma Watson was not happy with that!
“David let the camera roll for like two minutes and just left me there screaming. When I looked at the edit, I was like, ‘Wow.’ I mean, fair enough, you can't have two minutes of me screaming. But I was like, ‘I did that a lot longer than was actually shown!’ But, no, I think it was quite disturbing for the crew…which I was pleased about, obviously,” Watson told Live About.
Surely, two minutes of Hermione being tortured and screaming at the top of her lungs would not have made for quality cinema, but why make Watson film it in the first place, then? Anyway, at least, the actress learned that she could be convincing enough with her painful expression when the entire crew was uncomfortable with the result, so there’s that.
Source: Live About