‘Beauty and the beast’ Emma Watson addresses Stockholm syndrome accusations

CEBU, Philippines - Emma Watson thought long and hard about whether or not to star in “Beauty and the Beast.”

An ardent feminist, the 26-year-old actress wrestled with the idea that she’d be portraying a victim in Disney’s live-action musical.

“It’s something I really grappled with at the beginning: the Stockholm-syndrome question. That’s where a prisoner will take on the characteristics of and fall in love with the captor,” Watson confesses in Entertainment Weekly’s February/March issue.

“Belle actively argues and disagrees with Beast constantly. She has none of the characteristics of someone with Stockholm syndrome because she keeps her independence; she keeps that freedom of thought,” Watson adds.

“I also think there is a very intentional switch where, in my mind, Belle decides to stay. She’s giving him hell. There is no sense of ‘I need to kill this guy with kindness.’ Or any sense that she deserves this. In fact, she gives as good as she gets. He bangs on the door, she bangs back. There’s this defiance that ‘You think I’m going to come and eat dinner with you and I’m your prisoner—absolutely not.’”

Watson hopes fans will respond to her take on the beloved princess.

“The other beautiful thing about the love story is that they form a friendship first. There is this genuine sharing, and the love builds out of that, which in many ways is more meaningful than a lot of love stories, where it was love at first sight. They are having no illusions about who the other one is,” she says. “They have seen the worst of one another, and they also bring out the best.”

It’s that kind of careful consideration that made Watson a shoo-in for the titular role.

“With actors who get to choose their roles, you look at their résumés and you start to see a kind of autobiography emerge,” Condon says. “From what I’d seen of Emma, she seemed to be the person, both on screen and off, who best reflected the qualities that Belle embodied.”

The director—who cast Dan Stevens as Beast—saw a lot of Belle in Watson, and Watson in Belle. As the actress herself explains, “What’s so beautiful about this story as a whole is this idea that Belle is able to see past these extraneous, external, superficial qualities of Beast. She is able to see deeper, and that’s one of her special powers. It is her superpower: empathy.”

On choosing Belle over Cinderella

It should come as no surprise that Watson prefers Belle to Cinderella. After all, she passed on the titular role in director Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 live-action remake of the Disney animated classic. Lily James eventually stepped into the princess’ glass slippers.

Why did Watson turn down such a high-profile part? “I didn’t know they were going to make ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at the time I turned down Cinderella,” she says. ‘But when they offered me Belle, I just felt the character resonated with me so much more than Cinderella did.”

Watson argues Belle is a much better role model than Cinderella. “She remains curious, compassionate and open-minded. And that’s the kind of woman I would want to embody as a role model, given the choice,” she explains.

“There’s this kind of outsider quality that Belle had, and the fact she had this really empowering defiance of what was expected of her. In a strange way, she challenges the status quo of the place she lives in, and I found that really inspiring. She manages to keep her integrity and have a completely independent point of view. She’s not easily swayed by other people’s perspective—not swayed by fear-mongering or scapegoating.”

“Beauty and the Beast” is one of the most anticipated movies of the year, but Watson admits she had concerns about the original script.

In fact, she only agreed to star in the film after being reassured it would be a collaborative process with director Bill Condon. They turned Belle into an inventor, like her father, as she’d wondered what the animated princess did all day. (FREEMAN)