Evanna Lynch on the Importance of Luna Lovegood
When Evanna Lynch, who so perfectly captured the quirky, charming, and self-assured Luna Lovegood, thinks about what Harry Potter means to her, it is not the movies or her role in them that first comes to mind. Her love of reading the books, that first discovery of each new character, location, and adventure, the pictures she painted in her mind, the connection she felt with many of the characters – Luna in particular – is what she holds most dear. She felt that Luna had a message for the world, a message of not only accepting oneself but also accepting others without a critical eye, and she wanted to bring that positive spirit to the world. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly‘s BINGE podcast, Evanna spoke passionately about playing Luna.
It was more than just a job to me. It was so precious. She’s such an important person to me. She’s helped me through so much that I felt I just wanted to protect her spirit and preserve her spirit. There are so many actors, and not that this is a bad thing, but it will just be an email sent to their inbox, and they’ll be like, ‘Okay, I’ll try on this person for today,’ and for me it was just so much more. It was all about Luna for me.
She wanted to give the world the true version of Luna from the books that had meant so much to her growing up.
She was completely authentic and herself, and her own self was so weird and so odd to everyone else and made everyone uncomfortable, but she just wore her oddness with so much self-acceptance and grace. I felt like an odd teenager growing up, and I felt like there were a lot of [things] about myself that I wanted to hide, that I wasn’t comfortable with, and every time I would read Luna, I would just feel this enormous relief. Here was someone who was so much more odd than I, but who didn’t question it, who just accepted it about herself, and the way she did it, it made it that however she was, was perfect.
Evanna also shared how at times she wonders, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if there is more to the stories than meets the eye.
Every now and then I’ll just be like, ‘Is this all an elaborate cover-up and the wizards are howling with laughter at how we’ve accepted this?’ I start to get paranoid. ‘Is J.K. Rowling the only Muggle in the world who knows about the secrets and she’s somehow been entrusted?’ It’s almost like it reinforces the barrier between us and them if there’s one magical Muggle who’s making it seem like it’s a fantasy world and what if it isn’t? What if she’s covering it up? That would make me crazy!
Luna wasn’t just a role in a movie for Evanna because of the connection she felt with her. Reading the books as a teenager, she found she felt better about accepting her own differences because Luna was so comfortable in her own skin. Is there a character in particular that you relate to that helped you deal with your own uncertainty about yourself? Please share in the comments below.
Check out our previous coverage of another EW BINGE podcast here with Ben Hibon, the director of the animated telling of the Deathly Hallows story, talking about his vision and designs for the character Death; and here, where you can find out what Imelda Staunton really felt about portraying the only character more hated than You-Know-Who!
