Emma Watson is currently touring and promoting her latest, the Disney live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.
According to La La Land director Damien Chazelle, Miles Teller, who starred in Chazelle’s first feature, Whiplash, and Emma Watson were originally signed on to play the two leads of his six-time Oscar winning film.
Inevitably, the question was posed to Watson of exactly what happened there and was this even true.
Speaking to Sirius XM (via Entertainment Weekly), the Harry Potter alum explained: “It’s one of these frustrating things where sort of names get attached to projects very early on as a way to kind of build anticipation or excitement for something that’s coming before anything is really actually agreed or set in stone.”
Watson also explained that she had been committed to doing Beauty and the Beast for years, and implied that as both would require extensive time, commitment and training on her part, taking on La La Land as well as Beauty and the Beast was not going to work out.
“I knew I had horse training, I knew I had dancing, I knew I had three months of singing ahead of me, and I knew I had to be in London to really do that,” said Watson. “And this wasn’t a movie I could just kind of parachute into. I knew I had to do the work, and I had to be where I had to be. So scheduling conflict-wise, it just didn’t work out.”
This would contradict the rumours that Watson was “too demanding” and suggests rather that she simply couldn’t commit to the film for the sake of time.
The same would be suggested from Watson’s interview with ITV’s Lorraine (via Digital Spy), during which she said: "With a movie like Beauty and the Beast it's like three months prep, it's like three or four months shooting, it's in the UK.
"I had to be there to do that and, as I was saying before, you can't half-arse a project like this – you're in or you're out.
"And I was like, 'I've kinda got to be all in', and so this was really where my heart was and I knew I had to fully commit and make sure that I did this."
