Evanna Lynch on “My Name is Emily” and Life After “Potter”

At the premiere of her latest film, My Name is Emily, at Galway Film Fleadh, actress Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) was interviewed by UTV Ireland. In addition to discussing My Name is Emily, Lynch also talked about having been a part of Harry Potter and her excitement for both Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Although she has worked on other projects since Harry Potter, Lynch told UTV,

People still call me Luna. I wouldn’t be where I am without it. I was very shy when I was young, and I think it’s really hard to be shy as an actor because you have to be quite aggressive and get out there. You have to want to meet people and for them to see you. It’s only opened doors for me. It’s up to me if I want to change it or challenge it.

She continued by saying that she never went into the role of Luna with the expectation of building an acting career from it:

I didn’t get nervous the way I sometimes do now because I was 14, and I absolutely loved the films and books. I didn’t think of the pressure and what people expected of it; I was just enjoying it so much. Sometimes I look back, and I’m glad I was so naïve! But I’m grateful that I had that.

On working with My Name is Emily director Simon Fitzmaurice – who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and wrote the script for the film using iris-recognition technology – Lynch admits that she was “intimidated” by communicating with him at first but then saw a benefit:

You can say exactly what you’re feeling. No small talk.

The film, which she describes as “very much Irish,” sees Lynch playing “a 16-year-old girl who goes on a road trip with her friend to get her dad back.”

Her mum has died, and her dad doesn’t deal with the grief very well. Her dad starts to lose his grip on reality, and he’s put into a home. She decides she wants to bust him out of there. She learns that her parents weren’t perfect, and learns a new kind of love from Arden.

With other projects on the horizon, including the upcoming telefilm Danny and the Human Zoo, Lynch also took time to share her thoughts on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, both of which have remained largely under wraps:

I just love that [J.K. Rowling] is constantly feeding us more. I don’t think any of us [is] willing to move on from those stories that we grew up with. I don’t think she wants to move on either. I love that she’s always reinventing it or finding new ways into it.

She added that she hopes to be involved with Fantastic Beasts in some way, saying,

I’m fascinated by that world and to see what the wizards are like with American accents. I’d love to be [in it], but I think I have my place in the universe.

To read UTV’s full interview with Evanna Lynch at Galway Film Fleadh, you can visit their website here.

Are you excited to see My Name is Emily? Would you like to see Evanna make a cameo in Fantastic Beasts? Let us know in the comments below!