Emma - Articles/Press - Wonderland Magazine 2022
Wonderland Magazine Autumn 2022
Photoshoot Here.
EDITOR'S LETTER
The moment Emma Watson bounded out of her taxi, straight from the gym, and went round hugging each and every crew member on the set of her Wonderland shoot in Hoxton was the moment we actually believed, 'Okay she is definitely doing the cover!' This issue, like many - but really this issue - has seen a chaotic number of somersaults, sprints and nosedives. And Emma, celebrating her directorial debut with Prada Beauty, was the bow that perfectly tied together this tornado of creative mayhem. Charismatic, kind and supremely intelligent, the actor and activist's work ethic and vision is something to wholly admire. Whether within her Prada Beauty campaign, which she breaks down with her friend Dr. Shiva Balaghi in a powerful interview, or on the set of her Wonderland shoot - Emma knows what she wants, and she will meticulously moodboard, dream, critique and perfect it until it becomes a reality.
INTERVIEW
Photography: Bartek Szmigulski Fashion: Toni-Blaze Ibekwe Words: Dr. Shiva Balaghi
Even when she was a child acting in the Harry Potter movies, people would tell Emma Watson she should direct and produce. A decades-long creative journey finally led her to directing her first film, a campaign for Prada Beauty, that stretches the boundaries of what a commercial can be and has changed the trajectory of her career. She speaks to cultural historian of the Middle East who she met at Brown University, Dr. Shiva Balaghi, about her journey.
Emma Watson shows up for her friends. During covid lockdown, months of isolation sometimes left me feeling a bit unsure and precarious. My appointment to get my first vaccine was coming up, and I just needed a friend to be there with me. The night before I texted Emma: Can you please take me tomorrow to get my covid shot? And the next morning at 8 AM, she showed up. As we drove through Los Angeles traffic. Emma and friends of her recent paintings and poetry. She wondered how she could bring it all together. I suggested making a film as a way to integrate her diverse creative work - writing, painting and performance. Fast forward two years later and she made her first film, commissioned by Prada Beauty as the campaign for their new perfume, Paradoxe. In preparation for directing the film, Emma turned a window looking onto the countryside into a whiteboard to brainstorm. She'd written words like connection, strength, bravery, push further and determination. Those words convey Emma's approach to all her various projects. I first met Emma over a decade ago when she took several classes I was teaching at Brown University. Through the years, our friendship has grown through a shared interest in art as a vehicle for social engagement. Our conversations can turn from the deeply personal to the realm ideas - and often to giggling silliness. Emma doesn't follow Twitter much, so sometimes in the mornings as I walk my dog, I'll ring her with updates. "Did you know, according to Twitter, you're getting married?" Emma laughed uproariously: "Who pray tell does Twitter say I'm to wed?" We spoke in August about her path to filmmaking...
SB So how did you finally arrive at this decision to make a film?
EW It's so funny how resistant human beings can be to their own possibilities, and resistant if I'm being honest to their own bigness. I think I was still trying to figure out how to step away from my bigger identity and my past. And I wasn't fully ready to integrate my past, present, and future self. I was trying to keep them in three seperate boxes, and your suggestion that I make a film just percolated over time. And then I started becoming involved in environmental activism and wanted to make films to tell some of that story. I started to widen my artistic community of friends and wanted to help them present their work better and offered to do photo shoots, make films, and build websites for them. The truth is, I kept running away from and always coming back to the same point - which is making a film. Finally, I realised how much I enjoyed it and how much I wanted to do it.
SB I don't think you were running away from it. I think you were developing the skill set and point of view to be able to make film.
EW Yes, the clarity.
SB I see in this film so many of the conversations that we've had, the art that you've been making, the way you've been living your creative life. Even in that conversation that we had when you were talking about the exhibition and possibly adding film, the first thing you said was: 'I see filming myself under water.' That was the first scene that came to your mind. And that's such an iconic moment in your film - that shot of you swimming in the ocean, up towards the light. You have not been running away, you have been developing you own visual language. And you found it.
EW It makes me so emotional to hear you giving me even more of the pieces that I had forgotten, because the truth is that sometimes in this process, I felt so deeply lost and at sea with no sign of the shore. When I stepped away from acting after Little Women, I knew I couldn't go backwards. I needed to find a new path, but I just had no idea what that path was. I'd had a really structured life - a life based on productivity and achieving a particular set of goals and a very specific rhythm. So, to take time away and not be sure as you're saying, I can see that during that time when I led me to this specific place and to this film. Nothing went to waste.
SB You used all of it. And that's what every succesful writer, painter, filmmaker always says: use all of it. I was thinking about how you always keep a garden alongside your art studios. And the way this film gravitates between the inside and the outside; that is your creative process.
EW Yes, I've been thinking a lot about utopia recently. Utopia literally means nowhere. And for three or four years, I felt like I was in a kind of no man's land. But that liminal space actually helped me collect some of the richest, most interesting things that have allowed me to make this film, helped shape this project. And that's the story of the fragrance as well; it is the paradoxe of this woman. As we were preparing for the film, we talked about how the fragrance was supposed to be for a woman who was whole and complete and in touch with the heartbeat of life. At the same time, she was shape-shifting and manifesting different facets of herself, whilst not being actually lost.
SB Your use of screens in the film is really stricking. I wonder if it's about a recognition of how you want to re-engage with filmmaking. In these past years, you've been experimenting with different forms of creative expression: collage, painting, photography, poetry, and now filmmaking. At the same time, you've been seeking and creating your own community of artists, actors, thinkers, one of mutual support.
EW Yes, I think that's absolutely right. There's something so special about making a film, because you need so many people. It's such an impossible feat to have these different parts all come together at the same time to create the perfect moment. The hair and makeup, the costume, the lighting, the director of photography, the performance, the set design. It's all coming together in one perfect beautiful symphonic moment. It's the lunar eclipse. And I just love so much the physical result of something that is the work of so many people making things together at the same time.
SB By the way, whoever the DP of this film was, they get your aesthetic. They see you.
EW Monika Lenczewska. The thing I saw in her work that made me want to work with her so much - I just felt the truth. I was watching an ad she made for Serena Williams, and she captured this one moment when the baby just gently reached out to touch Serena's hair. I've watched my best friend with her baby, and I know that moment to be true. Yes, her work is aesthetically beautiful, but you could tell that her pursuit, her hunger, her ache was for truth, even for a split second when something was speaking to truth, to reality, to real life. I knew how important that would be for the story I was trying to tell.
SB Did you write the script first and shoot the film?
EW No. There was an outline that Prada Beauty had put together of who this woman was. It was one of the things that really drew me in. It was about this woman who was askew and unexpected and exploring this idea of 'never the same, always myself' and the paradox. I didn't think I was going to include words in the final piece; it was going to be purely visual. We had to pull that ad together in 3 weeks, so we'd been working so intensely. The night before I was due to leave for Barcelona, I took 24 hours off. I spent time with a friend, got a good night's sleep, and woke up to meditate. And as I was meditating, it was just like someone was continually banging at my door. Knock, knock, knock. And it was the words. It all came together as this complete, finished thing in less than an hour. And then I recorded it on my phone. What's in the ad is the recording from that day. I wanted it to be audio I recorded in the moment when the idea came to me, with that specific performance.
The moment Emma Watson bounded out of her taxi, straight from the gym, and went round hugging each and every crew member on the set of her Wonderland shoot in Hoxton was the moment we actually believed, 'Okay she is definitely doing the cover!' This issue, like many - but really this issue - has seen a chaotic number of somersaults, sprints and nosedives. And Emma, celebrating her directorial debut with Prada Beauty, was the bow that perfectly tied together this tornado of creative mayhem. Charismatic, kind and supremely intelligent, the actor and activist's work ethic and vision is something to wholly admire. Whether within her Prada Beauty campaign, which she breaks down with her friend Dr. Shiva Balaghi in a powerful interview, or on the set of her Wonderland shoot - Emma knows what she wants, and she will meticulously moodboard, dream, critique and perfect it until it becomes a reality.
INTERVIEW
Photography: Bartek Szmigulski Fashion: Toni-Blaze Ibekwe Words: Dr. Shiva Balaghi
Even when she was a child acting in the Harry Potter movies, people would tell Emma Watson she should direct and produce. A decades-long creative journey finally led her to directing her first film, a campaign for Prada Beauty, that stretches the boundaries of what a commercial can be and has changed the trajectory of her career. She speaks to cultural historian of the Middle East who she met at Brown University, Dr. Shiva Balaghi, about her journey.
Emma Watson shows up for her friends. During covid lockdown, months of isolation sometimes left me feeling a bit unsure and precarious. My appointment to get my first vaccine was coming up, and I just needed a friend to be there with me. The night before I texted Emma: Can you please take me tomorrow to get my covid shot? And the next morning at 8 AM, she showed up. As we drove through Los Angeles traffic. Emma and friends of her recent paintings and poetry. She wondered how she could bring it all together. I suggested making a film as a way to integrate her diverse creative work - writing, painting and performance. Fast forward two years later and she made her first film, commissioned by Prada Beauty as the campaign for their new perfume, Paradoxe. In preparation for directing the film, Emma turned a window looking onto the countryside into a whiteboard to brainstorm. She'd written words like connection, strength, bravery, push further and determination. Those words convey Emma's approach to all her various projects. I first met Emma over a decade ago when she took several classes I was teaching at Brown University. Through the years, our friendship has grown through a shared interest in art as a vehicle for social engagement. Our conversations can turn from the deeply personal to the realm ideas - and often to giggling silliness. Emma doesn't follow Twitter much, so sometimes in the mornings as I walk my dog, I'll ring her with updates. "Did you know, according to Twitter, you're getting married?" Emma laughed uproariously: "Who pray tell does Twitter say I'm to wed?" We spoke in August about her path to filmmaking...
SB So how did you finally arrive at this decision to make a film?
EW It's so funny how resistant human beings can be to their own possibilities, and resistant if I'm being honest to their own bigness. I think I was still trying to figure out how to step away from my bigger identity and my past. And I wasn't fully ready to integrate my past, present, and future self. I was trying to keep them in three seperate boxes, and your suggestion that I make a film just percolated over time. And then I started becoming involved in environmental activism and wanted to make films to tell some of that story. I started to widen my artistic community of friends and wanted to help them present their work better and offered to do photo shoots, make films, and build websites for them. The truth is, I kept running away from and always coming back to the same point - which is making a film. Finally, I realised how much I enjoyed it and how much I wanted to do it.
SB I don't think you were running away from it. I think you were developing the skill set and point of view to be able to make film.
EW Yes, the clarity.
SB I see in this film so many of the conversations that we've had, the art that you've been making, the way you've been living your creative life. Even in that conversation that we had when you were talking about the exhibition and possibly adding film, the first thing you said was: 'I see filming myself under water.' That was the first scene that came to your mind. And that's such an iconic moment in your film - that shot of you swimming in the ocean, up towards the light. You have not been running away, you have been developing you own visual language. And you found it.
EW It makes me so emotional to hear you giving me even more of the pieces that I had forgotten, because the truth is that sometimes in this process, I felt so deeply lost and at sea with no sign of the shore. When I stepped away from acting after Little Women, I knew I couldn't go backwards. I needed to find a new path, but I just had no idea what that path was. I'd had a really structured life - a life based on productivity and achieving a particular set of goals and a very specific rhythm. So, to take time away and not be sure as you're saying, I can see that during that time when I led me to this specific place and to this film. Nothing went to waste.
SB You used all of it. And that's what every succesful writer, painter, filmmaker always says: use all of it. I was thinking about how you always keep a garden alongside your art studios. And the way this film gravitates between the inside and the outside; that is your creative process.
EW Yes, I've been thinking a lot about utopia recently. Utopia literally means nowhere. And for three or four years, I felt like I was in a kind of no man's land. But that liminal space actually helped me collect some of the richest, most interesting things that have allowed me to make this film, helped shape this project. And that's the story of the fragrance as well; it is the paradoxe of this woman. As we were preparing for the film, we talked about how the fragrance was supposed to be for a woman who was whole and complete and in touch with the heartbeat of life. At the same time, she was shape-shifting and manifesting different facets of herself, whilst not being actually lost.
SB Your use of screens in the film is really stricking. I wonder if it's about a recognition of how you want to re-engage with filmmaking. In these past years, you've been experimenting with different forms of creative expression: collage, painting, photography, poetry, and now filmmaking. At the same time, you've been seeking and creating your own community of artists, actors, thinkers, one of mutual support.
EW Yes, I think that's absolutely right. There's something so special about making a film, because you need so many people. It's such an impossible feat to have these different parts all come together at the same time to create the perfect moment. The hair and makeup, the costume, the lighting, the director of photography, the performance, the set design. It's all coming together in one perfect beautiful symphonic moment. It's the lunar eclipse. And I just love so much the physical result of something that is the work of so many people making things together at the same time.
SB By the way, whoever the DP of this film was, they get your aesthetic. They see you.
EW Monika Lenczewska. The thing I saw in her work that made me want to work with her so much - I just felt the truth. I was watching an ad she made for Serena Williams, and she captured this one moment when the baby just gently reached out to touch Serena's hair. I've watched my best friend with her baby, and I know that moment to be true. Yes, her work is aesthetically beautiful, but you could tell that her pursuit, her hunger, her ache was for truth, even for a split second when something was speaking to truth, to reality, to real life. I knew how important that would be for the story I was trying to tell.
SB Did you write the script first and shoot the film?
EW No. There was an outline that Prada Beauty had put together of who this woman was. It was one of the things that really drew me in. It was about this woman who was askew and unexpected and exploring this idea of 'never the same, always myself' and the paradox. I didn't think I was going to include words in the final piece; it was going to be purely visual. We had to pull that ad together in 3 weeks, so we'd been working so intensely. The night before I was due to leave for Barcelona, I took 24 hours off. I spent time with a friend, got a good night's sleep, and woke up to meditate. And as I was meditating, it was just like someone was continually banging at my door. Knock, knock, knock. And it was the words. It all came together as this complete, finished thing in less than an hour. And then I recorded it on my phone. What's in the ad is the recording from that day. I wanted it to be audio I recorded in the moment when the idea came to me, with that specific performance.