“I know what [Belle] meant to me as a young girl,” Emma Watson says in the new featurette for the upcoming live-action “Beauty and the Beast.” “When you love something that much, you really want to do it justice.”
Watson, who portrays Belle in the live-action remake, made it her mission to make the Disney heroine as feminist as possible, according to her recent interview with Vanity Fair and a recently released “Empowered Belle” featurette. By all accounts, Watson was instrumental to making this Belle as modern as possible.
“We wanted to give her this element of being quite industrious and very inventive,” Watson explains. She and director Bill Condon expanded on the 1991 Belle’s love of books and decided to give her her father’s (Kevin Kline) love of invention. As Vanity Fair writes, “In the original Disney movie, Belle is an assistant to her inventor father, but here she’s a creator in her own right, developing a ‘modern washing machine that allows her to sit and read.’”
Watson also discussed Belle’s updated wardrobe in the interview. She worked with costume designer Jacqueline Durran to add pockets to her costume as a sort of tool belt, and made sure Belle had proper footwear. “The original sketches had her in her ballet shoes, which are lovely — don’t get me wrong — but she’s not going to be able to do anything terribly useful in ballet shoes in the middle of a French provincial village,” Watson observes. So 2017 Belle dons bloomers and riding boots — a kick-ass image if there ever was one.
The featurette also highlights how much the animated version of “Beauty and the Beast” means to Watson. “Belle really dominated and characterized this huge part of my childhood and my growing up,” she emphasizes. With Watson’s determination to strengthen the beloved character, we’re confident that this new Belle will dominate and characterize the lives of many childhoods to come. After all, the “Beauty and the Beast” tracking numbers are predicting a gigantic opening.
Millennials grew up with Watson as she portrayed the whip-smart, courageous Hermione Granger from 2001 to 2011 in the eight “Harry Potter” films. Since leaving Hogwarts, Watson has taken on a bevy of wide-ranging, complex roles in films like “The Colony,” Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” and “My Week with Marilyn.” Next, she will star in the upcoming feature “The Circle.”
A self-proclaimed feminist, Watson has also dedicated her post-“Potter” time to activism. Watson gave a passionate speech about gender equality at the UN in 2014, serves as an UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, and has mentioned taking time off to exclusively focus on her feminist work.
Check out the entire “Empowered Belle” featurette below. “Beauty and the Beast” hits theaters March 17.
