But as it turned out, a couple of weeks later, she found out she beat out 3,000 girls to be cast as Cho Chang in Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She attributes the advantage to the fact that she was the only one in her group who was from Scotland, a trait casting agents particularly looked for.

Katie Leung’s Harry Potter Memories

Katie maintains her fondest memory of the four films she made in the Harry Potter franchise; It was the first audition since her parents, divorced at the time, reunited to accompany her in the same. He was only three years old when his parents divorced. While her mother returned to Hong Kong, she continued to live with her father, stepmother and siblings in Scotland.

Katie was also one of the few actors sent to China by Warner Bros. to promote Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in a rather rare move for Hollywood at the time. Her identity as an Asian-British woman continued to haunt her well into the franchise, particularly after Harry Potter hardliners criticized her for her romance with Daniel Radcliffe’s lead character.

They criticize racist for kissing Harry Potter

“At one point I was Googling myself and I was on this website, which was dedicated to the Harry Potter fandom. I remember reading all the comments. And, yeah, it was a bunch of racist shit,” Katie recalled on the Chinese Chippy Girl podcast in 2021. She also revealed that her publicists advised her to deny the existence of such comments if asked in promotional interviews.

Racist criticism continued for Leung throughout the franchise and peaked after her much-discussed kissing scene with Radcliffe in David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Her character Cho Chang appeared in Yates’ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). Considered Harry’s first romance, she is eventually sidelined when he ends up marrying and having children with his best friend Ron Weasley’s younger sister, Ginny Weasley.

Stop acting and eventual return

Katie’s unfortunate date with racist comments led her to reflect on whether or not she wants to continue acting. “Harry Potter was an incredible experience, but I didn’t know if I was chosen because of my acting ability or because I fit the character at the time,” he told the Evening Standard in 2011. However, enrolling in a drama course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland rekindled that spark for acting.

“I remember coming out of this and thinking, ‘Nothing is going to top it,’ because it was so successful. I remember being lost and thinking, ‘What’s next? People will have high expectations for me to top it, and that will never happen.’ “I think I was so afraid of meeting these expectations that I gave up, or didn’t give myself the chance to try to continue acting,” he recently told The Guardian.

“I was very hard on myself. I was constantly trying to prove that I was more than just the Harry Potter actor,” she added. Katie then worked extensively on stage, television and film. Her most notable work came with the rise of streaming, as she played Ash in the Prime Video sci-fi show The Peripheral in 2022 and voiced Caitlyn Kiramman in the Netflix action-adventure show Arcane from 2021 to 2024. She now has a new life, with her role as Lady Araminta Gun on Shonda Rhimes and Jess Brownell. Bridgerton season 4.

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“People thought I’d be offended by being asked to play Araminta. And I thought, ‘No, I feel seen for once!’ “I was a naïve 20 years ago,” she recently told Harper’s Bazaar. For her role as the evil but humanized stepmother, Katie was inspired by Maggie Cheung’s performance in Wong Kar’wai’s seminal 2000 Chinese film, In The Mood for Love. “There’s something romantic about the way it floats. “I wanted Araminta to slide,” Katie added.