Emma Watson has established her career with many films after her Harry Potter days. One of the films that helped round out her filmography was the 2012 feature Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Perks also saw Watson making out with her co-star Logan Lerman in the film. But it was one of the few scenes that Watson tried to avoid watching.
Emma Watson didn’t want to do any films when she was sent the script for ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a 2012 drama that was based on the novel of the same name by Stephen Chbosky. Chbosky would also end up directing the feature. It starred Watson as a very outgoing high school student mentoring a socially awkward teenager played by Logan Lerman.
When Watson was first sent the script for the movie, she was already fresh off of her Harry Potter films. Because of this, and her focus on education, Watson wasn’t really proactively looking for more work at the time. So much so she’d told her agent to stop sending her scripts.
“Perks somehow made it under the door. [My agent] said I really think you should read this one and I had been reading things but Perks was the first thing that lit a fire under me. I thought it would be really important to make this film, I think this could really make a difference to a young person watching it. It felt quite special somehow,” Watson once said in an interview with Roobla.
To Watson, the story stood out from other movies and television shows that tackled similar subject matter.
“There’s so many teenage TV series and movies and it’s a subject matter that people are sick of hearing about but this one felt to me really honest and authentic and it didn’t glamorise the experience but it didn’t patronize it and sensationalise it. It just looked at it,” she added.
Emma Watson refused to watch her kissing scenes with Logan Lerman in ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’
Watson was proud of her work in the film and the film itself. But there were certain scenes in Perks that she found difficult to re-watch. One of those scenes included making out with her co-star in the picture.
“It’s really funny because when I watch the film back, there are a few things I can’t watch. I can’t watch the Rocky Horror dancing scene, and I can’t watch the kissing scenes,” Watson once told Radio 1 (via Daily Mail).
In the film, Watson’s character pays tribute to Susan Sarandon and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was a scene she told Chbosky she was uncomfortable with.
“This film really pushed me out of my comfort zone. I told the director that I have just come from playing Hermione Granger and you are expecting me to dance and putting me in corsets, and it’s difficult,” Watson remembered.
Emma Watson wanted to kill it during her kissing scenes with Logan Lerman
Originally, Watson wanted to do the kissing scenes with Lerman justice. If only because The Bling Ring star worried that she wouldn’t be able to replicate the moment the way it was written.
“I mean, when I read our first kiss scene, it’s so epic. It’s like the most beautiful scene I’ve ever seen written on a page,” she once told MTV News. “And it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have to kill this one!’ Like, it’s so good, I wanted to do it justice. And it’s so emotional and we’re both so vulnerable in it, but the main thing was I get to do it with Logan,” Watson added. “He makes me feel so safe, so it’s going to be fine, which made it fine.”
