I Heart Watson (www.iheartwatson.net) is a non-profit fansite for actress and human rights activist Emma Watson. It is run by fans and has no affiliation with Emma herself, her management, family or friends. We have maintained this resource online for over 15 years, along with retired team members, because we appreciate her projects, and because it allows us to connect with people that have similar interests. We do not post or allude to facts or rumors regarding Emma's personal life, out of respect for her privacy. The content we share is not owned by us, unless otherwise stated, we just gather it all into a single resource. Thank you for visiting, and we hope you enjoy your stay!

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Posted on April 01, 2017 by Gabby   Press

As we have been posting in the past few days, Emma has interviewed author Eve Ensler for Elle UK, and they are sharing the conversation in a 4-part series. Today, the magazine has posted the 3rd part of it, in which Emma and Eve discuss life under Donald Trump, the importance of an artistic uprising and why those who wish to cause a revolution, must dance. You can read Parts 1 and 2 here and here, respectively.

PART 3.”What is this psychopath going to do to us next?'”

Emma Watson: I have another question, from Marzie, who said, “We seem to be moving in reverse at present in the U.S., with respect both to societal equality and women’s reproductive choices. The Vagina Monologues is more relevant than ever. What are your thoughts about art and culture and how they should try and help hold the ground for women’s rights?”

Eve Ensler: That’s a great question. I think art is everything. I think culture is where things change in us deeply. But right now, I think that people are very traumatised. They are very scared.

Having grown up in a house with a perpetrator who was violent every day and terrorising every day, I feel like that this country is suddenly very much like the house and the family I grew up in.

Every day we are glued to our phones, glued to our television; “What is this psychopath going to do next? How will he embarrass us? Who will he bully or hurt or humiliate today? It’s so easy to get locked into a syndrome where the perpetrator is ruling your life.

That’s where art comes in. This artistic uprising we had the other night in Washington Square park: there was poetry, there was dance, there was song, there was spoken word; and people left feeling so inspired and so energised. We have to get ourselves out of this syndrome of trauma and being re-traumatised. Art releases this energy. It exposes us to wonder again, and magic again, and ambiguity – all the things we need to really keep going and fighting and resisting in these times.

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Posted on March 31, 2017 by Gabby   Press

In the first part of this conversation (read here), Emma and author Eve Ensler discussed the difficulties of bringing The Vagina Monologues to publication and the activism it helped create. In the 2nd part, she speaks to author and activist Eve about the dangers of patriarchy, women’s rights to choice, and her harrowing trips to Bosnia and Croatia to meet survivors of wartime rape camps.

PART 2. “There’s a profound emergency in America.”

Emma Watson: Are things changing with regards to the patriarchy?

Eve Ensler: I think what is sad is that the men in power still don’t understand that the liberation of women is their liberation as well, because they’re still hungering for domination. I think that desire for domination, that predatory mind-set, is destroying our world in every respect. Whether it’s immigrants who are being denied entry after the U.S. bombed their countries, whether it’s the greed of extraction of oil which devastates the earth, whether it’s women’s bodies endlessly raped and abused and denied reproductive rights – there’s such a predatory mind-set at present. I think the younger generation were born with so many of the Rights that my generation didn’t have, so they naturally took them for granted. Now when those rights are under siege, suddenly people are waking up and realizing, ” We have to resist. We have to fight.”

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Posted on March 30, 2017 by Gabby   Press

In an exclusive and revelatory 4-part story for Elle UK, Emma interviews her latest Our Shared Shelf book club choice The Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler about her work and activism. The conversation will run for the next 4 days on the magazine’s official website, and we’ll be sharing it with you here, too.

PART 1. ‘A wild vagina journey.’

In this first part, Emma and Eve talk about the difficulties of bringing The Vagina Monologues to publication and the activism it helped create.

Emma Watson: Hello lovely Eve, how are you?

Eve Ensler: You know, this is One Billion Rising season, so it’s been crazy.

Emma Watson: Ok, so I’ve written out my questions for you because I’m nerdy like that.

Eve Ensler: I do love your book club, I think it’s amazing.

Emma Watson: It’s my favourite project, I just love it, it’s so cool. Here’s where I’ll start: I went on holiday last week and I read Insecure At Last, which I hadn’t read before, which I just loved. Hats off to you, it’s so brave to make your personal political. Last year I also read In the Body Of The World, and then we’ve obviously been doing The Vagina Monologues. Do you have a favourite of your pieces of work?

Eve Ensler: No. They’re all so different, and it depends – people always used to ask me about The Vagina Monologues, “what’s your favourite monologue?” and it’s such a cruel question, like choosing one woman over another woman. I think sometimes you have days when you’re more drawn towards one book or one monologue than you are to others.

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Posted on March 10, 2017 by Sara   Beauty & The Beast Press

PARADE | There’s something about Beauty and the Beast and its story of true love and courage that’s made it beloved for generations, especially since Disney brought the 1700s French fairy tale to the big screen as a sweeping animated movie musical in 1991.

This week, Emma Watson and Dan Stevens star—as the Beauty and the Beast—in a brand-new Disney version combining live actors, real settings and eye-popping computer animation.

The anticipation has been mounting since the project was first announced: More advance tickets for this Beauty and the Beast have been sold than for any other family film in history, according to online ticket vendor Fandango. As fans count down the days to March 17, they’ve been streaming advance soundtrack tunes, such as Ariana Grande and John Legend’s new version of the movie’s theme song.

In addition to Ariana Grande and John Legend performing the new film’s signature song, Céline Dion (who originally performed the Grammy-winning duet “Beauty and the Beast” with Peabo Bryson in 1991) performs a new original song, “How Does a Moment Last Forever,” composed by Alan Menken, one of the writers of the original score.

Some of Howard Ashman’s original lyrics from the songs “Gaston” and “Beauty and the Beast” that weren’t used in 1991 have been added back. The brokenhearted Beast sings a new ballad, “Evermore,” after releasing Belle from the castle to rejoin her father.

Ewan McGregor (Lumière) sings the extravagant “Be Our Guest.” And Belle gets a new song too. “It’s only a verse and a little bit of a chorus, but it’s very beautiful,” Emma Watson says. “We expand a bit on Belle’s past and see the story of her life before she goes to the castle. It’s a really lovely extra detail that wasn’t in the original.”

The 1991 Beauty and the Beast was the first animated feature to receive an Academy Award nomination for best picture. (It actually won two Oscars, for original song and original score.) That set the bar high for the new version, which was carefully reimagined to honor and expand on its predecessor.

The tale of Beauty and the Beast endures because it’s universally appealing, says the new film’s Oscar-winning director, Bill Condon, 61, whose résumé includes Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters and two movies in the Twilight franchise. “The idea of looking beyond the surface of things and finding the beauty underneath is one of the film’s legacies,” he says.

For Stevens, 34, who was Downton Abbey’s Matthew Crawley, the process of retelling a well-known, centuries-old tale—and embodying the Beast—was magical.

“It’s an alchemical process,” he says. “The original was a landmark film that contains a lot of the big questions about our identities, who we are, what we’re afraid of and what parts of our nature we should act on. It covers big themes and it’s able to contain some big ideas in a beautiful setting.”

The film doesn’t radically depart from the animated version, Condon says, “but it does resolve some intriguing questions left unanswered in the first. It gives you more, specifically where the Beast and Belle fall in love.”

The love story was only part of the attraction for Watson, 26. “The original was romantic, but in a way that didn’t feel contrived the way other fairy tales sometimes are,” she says.

Besides being a love story with a feminist bent, “it’s an action movie with huge amounts of stunts, wolf-fighting, horse-riding, guns and swordfights,” Watson says. “It’s also a romantic drama. And then there’s music and dance on top of that. On the other hand, it’s a comedy too. The comic timing of characters like Cogsworth and Lumière and Mrs. Potts—it’s just hysterical.”

“I think this version might be funnier than the original because of Josh Gad and Kevin Kline,” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw, 33, who plays Plumette, the castle’s maid who becomes a feather duster. “They’re a really funny double act!”

Mbatha-Raw also admires Belle’s spirit. “I loved that she was smart and bookish and didn’t fit in with the village,” she says. “She wasn’t privileged. She knew her own mind. I thought that was cool.”

Condon believes Beauty and the Beast will always be cool. In the end, it’s the weaving of the old and new in this beloved story that will captivate audiences, he says.

“People introduced the animated film to their own children, and the musical is still being performed all over the world. We’ve always had Beauty and the Beast around us, but that’s also because people remain so drawn to it.”

It is, indeed, a tale as old as time.

Beauty and the Beast was shot in the United Kingdom over the course of four months. The adaptation sets the story in mid-18th-century France so every set, prop and costume is sumptuously authentic to that era. Some details:

  • The ballroom features 12,000 square feet of faux marble and 10 glass chandeliers modeled on actual chandeliers from Versailles.
  • 1,500 red roses and 8,700 candles (or 104,400 inches of wax) were used as set decoration.
  • The enchanted forest took 15 weeks to complete. It featured live trees, hedges, a frozen lake and 20,000 icicles.