Emma Watson Shares The Reason She Almost Quit The 'Harry Potter' Franchise

The Harry Potter film franchise began 20 years ago in 2001 with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It then went on to have seven more films, concluding with the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011. These films were based on the book series by JK Rowling by the same name. The success of the films led to various follow-up books and spin-off movies as well. It made stars out of not just the author but also the actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson as the three leading characters Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger respectively.

Marking the 20-year feat, HBO Max released the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts. The cast of the film returned to where the magic started to celebrate the anniversary of the franchise's first film. The actors discussed their journey through the eight films over the course of the decade as the fanbase also grew up with them. There were a lot of revelations that were made in the two-hour-long special but among them was Watson admitting that there was a point in her acting career as Hermoine that she wanted to quit.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix director David Yates broached the subject of how Watson almost quit the film franchise. She acknowledged this, revealing that it was because at that point in her life she was feeling the pressure of rising fame and was lonely. "I think I was scared. I don't know if you ever felt like it got to a tipping point where you were like, 'This is kind of forever now,'" she said. "It was around the time of Order of the Phoenix when things started getting spicy for all of us. The fame thing had finally hit home – in a big way. No one had to convince me to see it through. The fans genuinely wanted me to succeed, and they all genuinely have each other's backs. How great is that?"

Watson even opened about feeling guilty for finding success as Hermoine. In an interview with Vogue, she even opened up about going to therapy to sort through her feelings of guilt. "I’ve sat in therapy and felt really guilty about it. I’m like, why me? Somebody else would have enjoyed and wanted this aspect of it more than I did," she shared. "And I’ve struggled a lot with the guilt around that. I’m like, I should be enjoying this a lot more, I should be more excited and I’m actually really struggling."

In the anniversary special, Grint shared that he also understood what Watson was going through having trodden the same path as her at a young age along with Radcliffe. "I also had similar feelings to Emma kind of contemplating what life would be like if I called it a day, but we never really spoke about it," he shared. "I guess we were just kind of going through it at our own pace. We were kind of in the moment at the time. It just didn't really occur to us that we were all having similar feelings." Radcliffe could not agree more and added, "As a 14-year-old boy, I was never going to turn around to another 14-year-old and be like, 'Hey, how are you doing? Is everything okay?'"