Bonnie Wright

EO

How did Harry Potter change your life?

BW

At the time, it was obviously changing my day-to-day experience because I was suddenly part of this whole new world that was emerging. But I don’t think it was until after we finished the series that it all really made sense to me. When I speak to the other cast members, it seems we all had a similar experience because, while we were making the films, it just became this strange kind of normal. It was simply this job that existed alongside the rest of our lives. Because we were all children together, it never felt like I was navigating it alone. Rather than being the only child on an adult set, we had one another, and in many ways it felt like a second school education in its own way.

As the phenomenon grew, my character grew, and the pressure around it grew, I became more aware of not only how it was changing my life, but also how deeply the series was changing other people’s lives. I’m incredibly grateful we didn’t have social media because we really only connected with audiences when each film came out, rather than navigating a constant public conversation as teenagers. I think that was a real gift for us and the experience. I started when I was nine years old, so it wasn’t as though I was consciously making a sudden career change. Instead, I was introduced to an industry that became the foundation for everything I wanted to do during and after. It led me to film school to study directing and writing, and I genuinely don’t think I would have pursued that path had I not grown up making Harry Potter. More than anything, it changed the way I understood collaboration, because filmmaking really is, and only can be, a team effort.

I think that collaborative spirit was also part of my nature, even as a young girl. I always wanted to take part and show up, which is probably what led me to audition in the first place. I remember thinking, “Why not? Let’s give it a go,” never imagining I would actually get the role. I was also endlessly curious on set, constantly asking the crew questions like, “What does this button do? Why did you light it this way?” Whenever I wasn’t catching up on schoolwork, I’d spend time getting work experience in different departments. I even adapted some of my school projects around filmmaking, including turning my final design technology project into something inspired by a film set. That world gradually became part of my own.

EO

Something you said really stayed with me: that your life was changing before you fully understood it. I’ve watched interviews where people ask you, as an adult, to describe what nine-year-old Bonnie was feeling, but those are really two different people. Are there things you understand about that experience that you simply couldn’t have understood at the time? Do you ever think about what you might have done differently, or does hindsight not really work that way?

BW

People often ask what advice I would give my younger self before it all started. Honestly, I don’t think I’d tell her anything. I’m very much of the belief that not knowing allowed me to be completely present. As we grow older, we become more self-aware, and with that comes judgment. Because everything was so new, I had nothing to compare it to, and I think that allowed me to experience it fully. That’s one thing I definitely wouldn’t change.

At the same time, I was so determined to have a normal childhood that I sometimes downplayed how extraordinary it all was. Whenever I could, I’d go back to school, and I never wanted my friends to think I was showing off or boasting about what I was doing. I probably held myself back from simply saying, “this is incredible.” Because I wasn’t very good at celebrating it while it was happening. I think I was just trying to protect a sense of normalcy. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how remarkable the experience really was.

EO

And are you now?

BW

Much better. I think I celebrate it now with a real sense of gratitude, and with the perspective that only comes from time. I can finally say, that really was extraordinary, and fully mean it. I now appreciate so much more just how much that was for a young person to carry. I also have a lot more grace for the girl who did the best she could with the experience and perspective she had. Reflecting on it with the other cast members over the years has been especially meaningful because so many of us have arrived at the same realization. We look back at one another and think, that was extraordinary. We really did that.

EO

Where does it live in your life now? That experience is so specific I’d imagine it’s not something that disappears itself quietly.

BW

No, it definitely hasn’t gone away. I think its closeness changes depending on the day and on how fulfilled I feel in other parts of my life, but I wouldn’t say I’m beholden to it. I always know that it set me on a particular trajectory and made certain opportunities, collaborations, and relationships possible that probably wouldn’t have existed otherwise. In many ways, it’s a very back-to-front way of building a career. I began on the biggest possible stage and have gradually moved toward more independent forms of storytelling. It’s definitely an unusual path, but one I’m incredibly and consistently grateful for.

EO

I once interviewed a curator who said a single exhibition they curated completely changed the course of their life. They described it as building a career backwards also, beginning with the defining moment rather than working toward it. Listening to you, it feels surprisingly similar.

BW

It definitely is. There are still days when you miss that electric feeling of being on a set of that scale. I’ve found versions of that excitement making independent films, but the level of world-building that’s possible on a production like Harry Potter is unparalleled. The craftsmanship across every department, the sets, the costumes, the visual effects, everything that goes into creating those worlds, is just phenomenal. I’ve always loved fantasy and science fiction, and I’d love to make something in that space myself one day, although those projects obviously require enormous resources. At the same time, those films taught me that the same commitment to craft exists at every scale of filmmaking, whether you’re making an enormous studio production or something on a much smaller scale.

EO

Why did you choose to pursue a film education?

BW

Going to film school was also incredibly important to me. I could have skipped college and tried to start directing immediately, but I wanted to learn alongside people my own age. I’d spent my childhood working with people who were decades ahead of me professionally, and I really valued becoming part of a community of contemporaries. That experience grounded me in a completely different way. It reminded me that I still had so much to learn creatively and as a person.

EO

How did that experience shape your relationship to acting? You’re growing up at the same time Ginny is growing up in the context of the HP world. How did you negotiate becoming yourself while also becoming this character?

BW

The lines really blur. You’re going through your own coming-of-age experience while playing a character who’s going through hers, all while you’re learning how to act. Sometimes it became difficult to separate performing from simply growing up. It all happened simultaneously, and there wasn’t much distance between those different versions of yourself. It all feels like one continuous experience rather than distinct stages that I experienced throughout my adolescence. I was simply putting one foot in front of the other. I don’t think I had some grand plan at that age or knew how to structure it in any way, it just had to happen.

EO

Did it feel like responsibility, or was it intuitive because you’d started so young?

BW

It felt surprisingly intuitive. I always felt genuinely connected to Ginny, and I loved playing her. At the same time, like many of the cast, I was very aware that so much of the character existed in the books and couldn’t possibly fit into the films. There were entire emotional arcs that never made it onto screen. As an actor, you carried all of that with you, even when the audience never saw it. That created an interesting tension between the character you knew and the character you were actually able to perform.

EO

How did you negotiate that?

BW

Sometimes you’d think, “How do I get from this scene to the next when so much of the character’s journey has been left out?” Fans understandably felt that too. Eventually you realize they’re adapting enormous novels into films that have to be three hours long, not seven, and that means making difficult choices about what serves the central narrative. Though, it sometimes felt like you were filling in those missing pieces yourself through the choices we were encouraged to make as actors. Over the years, that became easier because you developed more confidence, built stronger relationships with the directors, and learned to trust your own instincts about the character and where you could take it.

EO

I was thinking about the different directors that spanned the series. In some ways they changed as you changed, as all of you moved through different stages of adolescence into adulthood.

BW

Exactly. David Yates directed the final four films, so there was a real consistency toward the end. But Chris Columbus, who directed the first two, deserves enormous credit for establishing what that world became. He had so much experience working with children, and from the very beginning he created an environment where we felt safe, confident, and genuinely part of a family. I think that atmosphere and logic carried through the entire series. He understood that the success of those films depended not just on the spectacle but on making the children feel secure enough to grow into those roles.

EO

Chris Columbus directed Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire among others, but he’s American, isn’t he? I always thought that was funny given that J.K. Rowling insisted the cast itself be British.

BW

Yes, he’s American. Maybe that was the one exception she was willing to make. He ended up being the only American director across the series. It wasn’t normal for large-scale young adult adaptations at that scale being greenlit or made, so asking a studio to build an entire franchise around children was a huge leap of faith. Having someone who understood how to support young performers probably made everyone feel much more confident and evidently paid off.

EO

How did all of this affect your life in London?

BW

I never had to relocate for filming because I already lived in London, so every evening I went home to my family. Whenever I wasn’t catching up on schoolwork on set, I still attended my regular school. One of my parents came with me every day because they both worked for themselves and could make that possible. I still saw my brother at night and maintained many of the routines that made life feel normal. Those things became incredibly important in helping me stay grounded.

EO

Was that different for the rest of the cast?

BW

Very much so. A lot of the other actors came from different parts of the country, so they had to relocate to apartments or hotels during filming. Going home meant an entire day of travel, so they couldn’t see their families nearly as often. Some parents weren’t able to stay with them, which meant working with chaperones instead. We were all having the same experience on set, but our lives away from it were actually very different. By the end of the series we’d gone from being nine-year-olds to nineteen-year-olds, and naturally our social lives had completely transformed alongside the films.

EO

Were you privy to the scripts and the writing, despite all the secrecy?

BW

Yeah, totally. The adaptation from book to screenplay was an enormous undertaking, so by the time the script reached us, it was what it was. My script was always a rainbow of pages because revisions were happening constantly. Every week there’d be another color, since each round of revisions was printed on different paper. There were so many producers involved that improvisation rarely happened. You didn’t really change a line on the day. Everything had already been carefully worked through.

EO

I was reading about Steven Kloves saying that when he first met J.K. Rowling, she asked him to stay as true to the characters as possible. The one thing he admitted to her was that his favorite character wasn’t Harry, but Hermione, which I thought was so telling. I was also intrigued by you all being an ensemble cast, which rarely happens on big budget film productions. What was it like serving a storyline that ultimately always had to return to Harry?

BW

I actually think television, as a medium, naturally allows for more of an ensemble because it simply has more time. Independent film can do this too, but a studio feature usually has to be much more economical with its storytelling. Harry Potter follows a fairly traditional hero’s journey, so if something didn’t ultimately serve Harry’s narrative or move his story forward, it often disappeared from the screenplay. That inevitably meant large parts of other characters’ arcs never made it into the films.

There are fans who could spend hours talking about everything they wish had been included, and I completely understand that because they’re so invested in those characters. But the more I became interested in filmmaking—particularly screenwriting and adaptation—the more I understood the choices the screenwriters were making. I could still agree with the fans that certain characters deserved more time, while also understanding why those decisions had to be made. You’re trying to make a film that audiences can emotionally follow, not a seven-hour adaptation. I always wanted to understand how the whole machine worked.

That’s probably why I became fascinated by everything happening behind the camera. Interviews naturally focus on the actors because they’re the faces audiences connect with, but there are so many people whose work is just as fascinating, if not more so. On Harry Potter, creatures like Dobby and Buckbeak were built from scratch as full animatronics. At that time, I don’t think I fully appreciated how extraordinary that was. Aside from a handful of scenes that relied entirely on green screen, almost everything was physically built. We were surrounded by real sets, real environments, and practical effects. It gave you a completely different appreciation for how much craftsmanship went into creating that world.

EO

As I’ve gotten older, that’s become one of the things I appreciate most. Actors naturally receive so much attention, but filmmaking is itself defined by the unsung people who make it magic. Most audiences will never know the names of the people building the sets, creating the props, designing the costumes, operating the cameras, or figuring out the effects, but every one of those departments shapes the final film.

BW

Exactly. You’re only bringing one part of the story. The costume is a story in itself. The room you’re standing in, the creatures, the props—they all become part of the performance. We spend so much time talking about the relationship between a director and an actor, but I think the relationship between an actor and their environment is just as important. We were incredibly fortunate on Harry Potter because those worlds genuinely existed around us.

You can feel the difference when you watch a film. If so much of a film has been created digitally, performances can sometimes feel flatter because the actors aren’t actually relating or responding to their environment. The way you move through a room, respond to light, touch a costume, or interact with a creature shapes the performance in ways audiences instinctively feel. It’s difficult to fake or manufacture that relationship. That’s one of the things I value most about the way those films were made.

EO

Even from the perspective of cinematography, you’re collaborating with architecture. Blocking a scene inside a real environment must change the feeling of everything.

BW

I imagine it must be frustrating for cinematographers when so much of what they’ve learned is about working with space, light, and movement, only to be standing in front of a green screen. You can be told what a set is going to look like, perform inside that imagined world, and then discover later that it’s been completely redesigned in post-production. Suddenly there’s a disconnect between the performance and the environment. For me, creativity has always come from the relationship between people and the worlds they inhabit. When that relationship becomes entirely imagined, something inevitably changes.

EO

What do you think sets the series apart? What made it so enduring?

BW

I think we genuinely built a world, and that world still exists. People can visit those sets today, even if they’ve evolved into more of a museum experience, because they were originally built as real places. Audiences believed in them because they were tangible. They became immersed in them and formed genuine relationships with those spaces. I still meet seven-year-olds who love the films as though they were released yesterday. I think that’s because every detail mattered, from the architecture to the props to the books sitting quietly on a shelf. Even when audiences couldn’t consciously see those details, they could feel that they were there.

EO

Did you believe it yourself?

BW

I think the magic came as much from the people as it did from the sets. There were hundreds of people working together, cameras everywhere, extraordinary craftspeople, and actors we all admired. On the biggest days there was this incredible sense of adrenaline because everyone understood the scale of what they were making.

EO

I’m also thinking about the intimacy of it. You’re right, one moment you’re surrounded by hundreds of people, and the next you’re acting opposite Maggie Smith.

BW

That was one of the loveliest things about those films. The children naturally spent most of their time together, but once the cameras rolled, everyone was simply another actor in the scene. None of the older cast ever treated us like little kids. They gave us the same generosity, focus, and attention they gave one another because they understood that the performances only worked if we trusted each other. That confidence meant everything when you’re a teenager who’s constantly wondering, “Do I belong here?”

Chris Columbus was especially wonderful at that. I can’t stress enough how from the very beginning he made us feel confident enough to contribute ideas rather than simply being told what to do. For a child, that’s an extraordinary gift. It gave us permission to grow into those roles and believe we deserved to be there.

EO

How did you make sense of whether not you belonged?

BW

There was the feeling you had while we were making the films, which was very much, “How did I get here?” It felt like pure luck that I’d landed the role at that age. You ask yourself all sorts of questions. Was I chosen because of my performance? Was I chosen because I happened to look like the character? Then you spend the next ten years growing up into someone completely different from the child who was originally cast. Afterwards, you have this strange experience of trying to build a career beyond the thing everyone already knows you for.

I’ve often thought it’s a little like being a musician who’s forever associated with one album. Those are the songs everyone knows, but you’re trying to write something completely different. That’s probably the harder part. I finished Harry Potter when I was nineteen, and I’m thirty-three now. Since then I’ve gone to film school, worked across different mediums, made other films, and constantly pushed myself through curiosity rather than obligation. Some days I still wonder, “How did I get here?” But I feel much more comfortable with that question now because I’ve built a life beyond the films. It doesn’t come from trying to prove something. It comes from wanting to keep learning.

EO

You seem to have come through this experience differently than many people who also grew up as child actors in front of camera. Why is that?

BW

Maybe, but I also think many of the other cast members would probably say something similar. Where our experience differed from a lot of child actors was that we weren’t isolated. I’ve met actors who were the only child on a set, and that’s a completely different experience. When we weren’t filming, we were in classrooms together doing schoolwork, or we’d be playing table tennis and snooker and just messing around. We still had the freedom to be bored, to be silly, and probably do things we weren’t supposed to do. I think that playfulness was incredibly important to our development.

Becoming a parent has made me think about it even more. My son is only one almost three, so obviously he’s not nine years old on a film set, but watching him play has made me appreciate just how essential that part of childhood really is and maintaining it. Imagine if we’d lost that. I’m incredibly grateful that we didn’t.

EO

It’s strange because only now do you have the perspective to understand what was actually happening.

BW

Totally, your brain is still developing through so much of that experience, and even though I talked to my parents constantly—and I was lucky because they’re both very reflective people—I don’t think I would ever fully understand what I was experiencing until later. I’m sure there were things I kept bottled up simply because I didn’t have the language for them yet. But I always felt safe enough to say when I was overwhelmed or confused.

EO

I’ve been rewatching the films recently, even before reaching out to you, and I kept thinking that people rarely talk about how they were actually made. We talk about the characters, the mythology, even the stories about who almost directed them, but the filmmaking itself transformed so much of the industry and set new expectations and subgenres.

BW

Completely. It changed so many people’s careers and so many different areas of filmmaking. I’d spend time sitting with different departments watching them experiment with new ways of casting heads for prosthetics or developing entirely new fabrication techniques. You had the best craftspeople in the world working together over the course of years, with the resources and the time to genuinely innovate. If you traced certain developments in visual effects, prosthetics, props, or creature design today, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them led back to experiments that happened in the context of and on those films. It was exciting to be part of something that was pushing the craft forward on so many different levels.

EO

The culture shifted.

BW

The culture, absolutely. It expanded people’s imaginations about what cinema could do. Even the idea of characters moving between the Muggle world and the magical world has become such a familiar narrative device now. You see versions of that structure everywhere, stories that exist simultaneously inside everyday reality and something fantastical. Harry Potter reshaped the language of popular storytelling.

EO

When you were acting opposite creatures like Dobby, there were practical models on set before the visual effects were added. How did those physical references shape your performance? Did they begin to feel real over time?

BW

They absolutely did because they existed. There would often be several versions of the same creature. One might be designed for the movement of its eyes, another for the way it breathed, and another for close-ups where you could see the translucency of the skin and the veins beneath it. The craftsmanship was extraordinary. Those physical models would then be scanned and brought to life digitally, but the foundation was always something tangible. You could spend hours just looking at them. There was an entire creatures department dedicated to that work, and I don’t think many productions build things in quite the same way anymore.

EO

It makes me think of places like Disney World. There’s something about physically building an entire world for people to step into rather than simply representing one.

BW

This was more like theatre, I think. But that’s also what film was, right? When you think about the first incarnations of film, a lot of them were about spectacle and performance. Capturing a train coming into a station was one of the earliest things put on film. People in the audience jumped out of their seats and ran away because they thought the train was truly coming. That’s kind of what these movies still are. Whereas a lot of cinema has gone towards drama and story.

EO

Or reality.

BW

Yeah. Reality television too. Making things look really real. Especially as digital cameras have gotten so real that there’s no texture separating it anymore. That’s why I still love the genre of fantasy. Because to me, that is what cinema first was: capturing illusions on camera. Those early days of cinema were all these moving parts and sets and magicians and ballerinas.

EO

I wonder how that feels now that you have a son. Do you think about experiencing that magic through him?

BW

Obviously he might not like it and I’ll have to accept that. But I’m looking forward to living through it again, especially the books. I read them when they each came out and then reread them when we were making each film, but I haven’t read them in years. So I’m really looking forward to rereading the books with him.

Watching the films, I think I just want him to lead the experience, to be honest. For his interest and curiosity to lead it. I’m not going to be like, “Okay, we’re sitting down and we’re going to watch these films that I was in as a child.” It’ll be interesting to experience it through him. It’s like showing someone your favorite movie or taking them to your favorite restaurant. You get to kind of live through that first experience again. So I hope to feel that magic even more by watching it with him. But who knows? We’ll see if he likes it.

EO

Why did you move to New York?

BW

I moved to New York because of a mixture of things. My boyfriend at the time was in New York.

EO

How old were you?

BW

I was 23. I lived there for just under two years before I came to LA. I had friends who had moved there too, and I’d graduated from college two or three years before that. I’d spent my whole life in London and was like, “I need to refuel. I don’t want to be defined by who I’ve been before.” You have all the same friends from high school and all the same everything. So I was like, “I need to go somewhere new.” And so I went there, and it was quite a quick change. The partner I was with and I broke up within two weeks of me moving there.

EO

Where were you living?

BW

I was living by Astor Place, just a few blocks below Union Square. The breakup was almost the best thing, because then I had this amazing, fun, single two years of exploring the city and doing what I should have done, rather than being tied to someone else’s version of the city or being in a relationship.

Those two years were amazing. I loved it. But then I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I can actually survive in New York unless I move to a different neighborhood.” And I was at this moment where I was like, “do I fully commit to living here or do I go back to London or I try somewhere else?” All the work I’d been inspired to make within my filmmaking was in these open, expansive landscapes. I was very drawn towards nature and being by the ocean. I was getting really obsessed with wanting to surf and really loved the idea of living a coastal life. And then I remember thinking I could have that in LA, but also not live in the middle of a beach town somewhere and still have the industry. So I moved there thinking, I don’t know if I’m going to like it, but I may as well just try. I’m halfway there.

I’ve been here since 2016 and it’s totally changed my lifestyle. I live a very quiet, countryside life. And I don’t really live an industry or Hollywood lifestyle. A lot of my friends do not work in the film industry at all.

EO

Do you think about the industry ever?

BW

I do, but not all the time. I’ll go and have an experience or a meeting and it hits you like a bus. It is like a living and breathing entity, and then you step out of it and you’re like, “it doesn’t even exist.” You can put yourself in and out of it, or rather I’m in a position where I can, because it’s not my every day, which is an enormous privilege.

EO

No one’s written a book yet...

BW

Oh, about the experience? I mean, Tom Felton, who played Malfoy, wrote an autobiography that touched on the films. But yeah, I don’t feel like anyone’s going to write something bad or some exposé piece because I don’t really think there is much to expose. Luckily, between all of us as actors, ego hadn’t really come into full force yet which made for an incredibly lucky experience, because it could have been excruciatingly and profoundly different. But I do think there was less ego than you would assume on a set like that in general. And I think that is down to how they cast us as actors. They saw that we weren’t these kind of competitive, ego-driven children, and they saw that we were more humbled. Because when you think about it, it wasn’t by chance, we’ve all more or less ended up being quite normal, sweet people.

EO

I’m curious how you felt about Hermione, given that she was one of the main female characters alongside Ginny.

BW

When I read the book, I loved her and all the other female characters because they felt like they represented what I liked a girl to be: more sure of herself, outspoken, and not the side character to a man. I feel like many people would agree that the female roles in the story are some of the most cherished and respected. Hermione, Ginny, and Luna—all of those characters were people I could get behind on any given day. Before that, I could never really identify with that many female characters in different stories I was encountering.

EO

At that age, were you aware of gender?

BW

At that early age, I guess I was aware of it because I wasn’t a very girly-girl, or however best to say that. I was constantly interested in shape-shifting past gender when I was younger, in the more obvious sense of things. I would absolutely refuse to wear a dress. I loved sports and playing soccer. Maybe I was told that’s not a girly thing to do because of the stereotypical roles you see in the princess story. So for me, characters like Hermione and Ginny, who were celebrated for their intelligence and confidence, were really cool to me.

EO

How did that shape how you presented yourself?

BW

I was always told from a young age I could be whatever I wanted to be. I was never told, “oh no, you have to wear a dress. We’re going to this thing and that’s what girls wear.” So I think it was just how I was brought up. My parents enabled me to not need to process that later on in my life, which I understand a lot of people do. I don’t think I needed to because I didn’t have that binary.

EO

What would you say Ginny’s and Luna’s version of that was?

BW

I think Luna’s is to not be judged at all, just to be her own pure self and not care what other people think. For Ginny, it was to be confident and fierce—how she comes into her own and becomes this intense Quidditch player or steps forward to be more of a fighter in Dumbledore’s Army. She’s definitely a bit more scrappy and wants to get involved, which maybe wouldn’t be something girls think they could do.

EO

What do you think they all have in common?

BW

Just that choice to be who they want to be. Obviously they all have moments of questioning who they are, but I think the common theme is that they’re fully inhabiting themselves.

EO

Did you have a sense of how big it was going to be based on how big the set was when you were nine?

BW

Not really. Everyone signed up to the first two films and then it was kind of one by one.

EO

You said that it took a while after the audition to be confirmed?

BW

Yeah. I just thought, “Oh, I guess I didn’t get it.” But I think it was just a slow process for them to make all the decisions. Also, my first scene came halfway through filming the first movie, so I think I was cast when they were well into the beginning of production.

EO

Do you remember how long it took?

BW

No. I could ask my parents maybe.

EO

Let me call your mom. I recently watched Daniel Radcliffe’s screen test for Harry Potter, and what struck me was that all of you seem to share the same openness when you talk about the experience.

BW

I think it’s all about being open, right? You need someone to show up openly because otherwise you’re going to be hard to direct. I think that was the truth of the experiece. All of us were open.

EO

That story about J.K. Rowling writing the book on napkins—did that reach you, or did you have any sense of it as a child?

BW

I knew of that story. I knew that she was a single mum writing it at the time. That perseverance, believing in the story and keeping going, was definitely something I admired. That sense of not taking no for an answer because you truly believe in the story you have on the page. So many publishers had turned her down and must be kicking themselves now that they weren’t the person who said yes.

EO

She was thirty.

BW

Yeah. And then Bloomsbury decided to say, “Okay, let’s give this a shot.”

EO

How has your relationship to, and your awareness of, the power of chance and individual belief changed as you’ve grown older?

BW

Yes, it’s that awareness of chance, right? You just need one person to say, “This is a good story,” and believe in you, and it can completely change the material conditions and fabric of your life. It’s the same way David Heyman read the books and thought, “This needs to be made into a film.” It only took one person to believe that should happen.

When we’re trying to make things happen—creatively, politically, whatever—it’s easy to imagine this big entity, this corporation, this larger world standing in the way. But at the end of the day, it’s still individual people. A single story can unlock something in someone and make them think, “Yes, this matters.” The same thing happened when I walked into an audition and someone said, “Yeah, this feels right. We’ll cast her.” That’s always stayed with me.