Emma Watson ‘Freaked out’ When She Had to Do an American Accent for ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’
Emma Watson entered new territory when she starred in Perks of Being a Wallflower. Not only was it unlike any film she’d done at the time, it also required the actor to abandon her natural accent.
Emma Watson was nervous about nailing an American accent for ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’
Despite Watson’s background, the film’s writer and director Stephen Chbosky felt that she was more than perfect for the film. He first got the idea to cast her as her Perks character Sam after watching her performance in a Harry Potter film.
“Once I had that screenplay, I had a much better idea of what I was looking for. That’s when I saw Goblet of Fire, saw that one scene where Emma and Daniel Radcliffe are in front of these steps, and it was really moving and I just felt that Emma could be Sam,” Chbosky once told Lamplight.
But it was meeting Watson in person that sold him.
“And then when I met her in New York and recognized a kindred spirit in her, I knew she was perfect for the part. And with each person, because I knew the characters so well I just instinctively knew what we were looking for,” she said.
After Watson accepted the part, her friends called her out on not reading the book that inspired the movie.
“My American friends berated me. They couldn’t believe I hadn’t read it and I realised there’s this amazing cult following of people that really care about it,” she once told The Scotsman.
Apart from that, Perks being the first time she had to do an American accent added more pressure.
“I was like, ‘I’ve got to do an American accent and I don’t know anything about being at an American school’,” she said. “So I started freaking out and making these crazy notes and emailing the director at three in the morning going, ‘What does this mean?’”
Emma Watson wasn’t a fan of her American accent in ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’
Watson confided that she did eventually manage to nail her Perks accent for the feature.
“It all worked out fine in the end but it was a real stretch for me, and there were parts that really pushed me out of my comfort zone in a big way,” she said.
She found her character’s voice with professional help. But she also credited her Perks co-stars Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller for offering their support.
“I had these guys,” she once told MTV News. “These guys were very supportive and they told me when I said things that didn’t really sound right. I worked with a coach and I hung out.”
Still, in a separate interview with MTV News (via Digital Spy), Watson’s confidence in the accent was a bit shaken.
“My accent? I was really nervous. I think it sounded terrible,” she said.
But it seemed Watson had little to worry about. The film garnered strong positive reviews when it hit theaters, and many praised the young actor’s performance.
Why Emma Watson decided to do ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ after ‘Harry Potter’
Perks struck a chord with Watson in a way that very few films did after the actor finished wrapping up the Harry Potter series. Speaking with Rookie Mag, Watson shared that she’d been looking at scripts for a couple of years. But Perks was the only one that held her attention.
“Well, I’d been reading scripts for two years before Perks came along, and nothing had really resonated with me in the same way,” she said. “It was just on my brain, it was on my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It didn’t even occur to me that it wouldn’t be made, because Logan was already attached, and I’d met with Stephen [Chbosky] and it was like he’d been waiting 12 years, really, to make this film.”
Watson wasn’t only one of the film’s main stars, she was instrumental in getting the movie made.
“Then I got a call saying that no one wanted to back it financially. So it took more than phone calls: I actually flew out to L.A. and met with all the different studio heads and basically pitched the movie, which was crazy—I’d never done anything like that before in my life,” she said. “[The story] just really spoke to my teenage experience and my friends’ teenage experiences. I felt like I’d watched too much Gossip Girl and was just dying to see something that spoke to the kinds of issues that I’d encountered as a young woman. It felt unique, and like someone had really written it from the heart.”
