Their characters may have been far from friendly onscreen, but Harry Potter stars Emma Watson and Tom Felton have a great relationship in real life. The actors, who portrayed Hermoine Granger and Draco Malfoy, respectively, reportedly had crushes on each other, per Page Six. In Felton’s new memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, he opened up about crushing on his co-star.
According to Felton, he and Watson had crushes on each other, albeit “at different times” in their lives. He specifically recalled hearing from a hairstylist on set that Watson liked him, writing, “She was 12, I was 15. I had a girlfriend, and in any case, I’d been programmed to dismiss any talk of that kind of stuff. I laughed it off. In fact, I don’t think I really believed [it].” Felton went on to praise Watson for her work on the Harry Potter series and noted that she was only nine years old when she filmed the first movie in the franchise.
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“She’d never been on a film set before, and out of the lead child actors she was the only girl,” he wrote. “She was surrounded by ‘boy humor’ — silly practical jokes and pre-pubescent laddishness … it can’t have been easy … She was in many ways treated like an adult from the day she was cast.” Felton continued, “It’s a phenomenon that can, I think, be more difficult for girls, than for boys. They are unfairly sexualized in the media and beyond. They are judged on their appearance, and any hint of assertiveness raises an eyebrow that wouldn’t happen if it came from a guy.”
Felton also acknowledged how there were rumors that the pair were an item when they were filming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He “denied” that he liked her “in that way.” However, his girlfriend at the time questioned the nature of their relationship. Felton wrote, “I remember using that familiar old line: ‘I love her like a sister.’ But there was more to it than that. I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anyone else.”
Watson has also opened up in the past about how she used to have a crush on Felton. In the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts special, she recalled how she crushed on him hard. The star explained that she began to have feelings for him after the stars were tasked with drawing a picture of what they thought God looked like, per Teen Vogue. Tom’s drawing, in particular, caught Watson’s eye. She said, “I just don’t know how to say it, I just fell in love with him.” Watson continued, “I used to come in every day and look for his number on the call sheet. It was number 7. And if his number was on the call sheet, it was an extra exciting day.”
