Emma Watson Reveals the Dark Truth Behind Red Carpets & Hollywood Pressure

I've worked with so many young people, musicians, who've all been told, like, all right, if you don't do this over the next 12 months, you're not going to make it. Yeah. Or like, if you don't do this right now, if you don't say yes to this song or this movie, it's like, you might as well wave it goodbye. You're never going to get the Oscar or whatever it may be, or the Grammy or whatever it is. And I can't imagine being a young person. Like, I'm 37 now and you process ideas like that differently. Yeah. If you're in your teens or even 20s, and maybe even 30s, but you process those statements with so much gravitas, especially when it's someone of influence and power saying it to you. Yeah. It feels like being surrounded by people who really believe in you and your longevity and your art versus, but that's hard to find. It is. It's hard to find. And, you know, I had a wonderful team. Like, I really did. I think it's just like, understanding that no one at the end of the day is going to be in the room, like when you're actually doing the thing, you have to carry that moment and you have to carry that pressure. Also, making films, the hours on them are so demanding that to have your own life alongside that, to have that balance is almost impossible. It's so all or nothing. It's so all encompassing, especially if you're in a lead role. You kind of go through these, you know, working six days a week, 14 to 16 hour days, and then you're just kind of dropped off at the end of it. And maybe you'll have a two or three month gap and then there's just kind of like nothing. And so you're like riding this like incredible peak of like adrenaline and cortisol. And then you just get like dropped off the edge and then you're like, OK, wait, now I have to be a functioning human again and I have to like figure out how to be a person in the real world. And I think some of those extremes then force an actor to either decide, well, I'm going to back to back it. So I'm going to basically go from one movie to the next and that's going to be my full life. Or you have to navigate these huge impacts on your nervous system that you need a system and a support system to help you navigate. And I think it's why addiction and mental illness in my profession and in a lot of high stress, high profile professions is so commonplace because you're trying to balance out these enormous chemical ups and downs. Yeah. Talk to people about why, because I think from the outside, when someone sees a red carpet or when someone sees an event, it looks really glamorous. Like until I ever attended anything and, you know, I always looked at it as like, oh my gosh, it's so glamorous and everyone's there and everyone must be friends and everyone must know each other because they all, you know, but then you're not saying that and anytime I've ever been on a red carpet, everyone's anxious and everyone's nervous and that's the real experience and people are almost waiting to leave. Yes. And some people do the red carpet and leave immediately. But what's going on there? Like walk us through like for people who may not. I think the first step is to just understand, even though you're wearing an incredibly glamorous dress and you're there to do something exciting, I don't think there's anything that can make it not weird that people are screaming at the top of their lungs. Like it just, everything in your body says something's wrong. Like people are screaming, something's wrong. But then you have to try to pretend as though this is all normal and you're unfazed. So you have like two things going on. One, you're like navigating this like sensory overload that's like telling you, oh my God, something is really wrong. Telling you how to pose, telling you where to look, telling you. Yeah. So you're trying to navigate, okay, something feels wrong, but I need to also simultaneously make it seem as though I am the most graceful and the most calm I've ever been in my whole life. And I need to like pose for this person and there's 50 different cameras and I need to make sure that I look perfectly into each and every one. And I probably will have had four different notes from the stylist about how I'm supposed to stand and what I need to do for the dress. And then I've got like 25 different talking points from the movie of like what I need to get across and also avoid saying or talking about. And so you're like, you need to be thinking about that. And the juggles crazy. And then I think everyone is in this like kind of jumped up state. And so like trying to have a normal conversation with anyone is basically impossible because you feel like an insane person. And so these are not environments in which you like have a nice chat with someone really. I mean, maybe if you're really lucky and you've worked with someone for a long time and you've established some trust. But I think that was the other thing that was like really difficult about movies and what like I kind of laugh at. Well, not in a mean way, but like, you know, you always get asked when you're like promoting these big films, like, so do you guys hang out on set? And like, do you guys hang out? And like, are you all friends? And everyone's sort of like not enthusiastically. But the truth is, no one has seen each other outside of work. Like very, very, very rarely. Mostly because the schedule is insane. Everyone's so tired that when they get any time off, you're going straight back to your hotel room to try to like claw in any piece of rest that you possibly can. And like, I don't know, like friendships require time and trust and presence. And those things like very rarely come about. They can and they do occasionally, but it's more of a, you know, solar eclipse than an everyday situation. So yeah, but you have to pretend. I think that's the part that starts to feel icky after a while is like you have to pretend that you're all best friends. And what's so sad, and I know this isn't just the case for me, but like, I think people wish they were. I think we wish we did have those real connections and we did have that real support. And so having to pretend that something exists that you actually really want, but don't have is like, it's like pretty grainy in the wound, you know? It's like, it's pretty like tough pill to swallow to have to act out something that you wish were real, but isn't real. And I think that's the part that starts to kind of, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but those are definitely the moments where I've been like, this feels dark. Like is anyone else like, this feels dark. And there's such a real reminder that it's still work. And it's almost like asking anyone who works at any company and saying, hey, do you hang out with your team after work every night? And the answer is probably no. Yeah, no, everyone's go home to their family. And maybe you've got a couple of, of course, you've got a couple of friends at work and it's wonderful if you have a friend at work that you work out with or see after hours, but you're not hanging out as the whole crew. It's, it's very unlikely. A hundred percent. And, and it, and it is that reality check of no, but this is also just work. Yeah. And their, their character stories are not their personal stories.