Name: Learn English with PODCASTS — How Emma Watson Became Hermione
Uploaded: 2026-01-14T16:54:23.000Z
Duration: 24 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

What was, where did the auditions come from?

Yes, so I did not go to a performing arts school.

I'd never done anything, I never acted professionally.

But they came, they did like a basically country wide search to find Harry, Hermione and Ron.

And so they asked my school if they wanted to submit any students who loved drama, who wanted to audition.

And so I was one of, I think about 12 students that was asked if I wanted to audition.

Yeah, I'm Ethan, your reallife English fluency coach.

And today we have a fantastic English lesson with a conversation between Emma Watson and podcaster Jay Shetty.

In this interview, Emma shares her experience getting the part of Hermione in the Harry Potter movies and why she so highly values truth.

We're going to learn so many advanced expressions along the way and I'll help you master them all.

The easiest way to ensure that you remember all of today's new expressions like performing arts, countrywide and audition that we've just seen so that you can actually use them confidently and naturally is with the magic flashcards on our real life app.

You can get free access to those right now by tapping the link down description below from your phone.

First you'll watch the clip with subtitles.

Then you'll learn all of the key expressions and pronunciation.

And finally you'll put everything that you learned to the test by watching a final time without subtitles and answering some quiz questions.

I had this weird weighted sense of destiny pretty much from the moment that they said they mentioned the audition.

I remember I brought I think maybe like seven different Beanie Babies with me along and all these different lucky talismans.

And I loved the world and the books so much.

My dad had been reading them to me before bed when I would spend the weekends with him.

And on long car journeys we'd often drive back and forwards to France.

Because if I hadn't have got it, I think they knew how Crusher I ended up doing nine auditions over a period of over a year and a half.

I did a pretty good job and I'm actually, I give my mother specifically credit for this.

She was like a warrior for my normalcy and for me having an ordinary life and going to school and no one wanted that.

I mean, it would have been considerably easier if I had not continued going to school.

But she, wow, like, I will forever be in her debt.

She Somehow knew that me feeling part of the ordinary world and feeling I had a place in it and that I belonged outside of those films was going to be crucial.

She basically didn't have anyone on her team.

She was kind of on her own on that one and she fought tooth and nail.

So Emma shares how she landed the role that would change her life.

She didn't attend a performing arts school.

So I did not go to a performing arts school.

That's an educational institution focused on training students in drama, music, dance and other arts performed in front of an audience.

Instead, she was performing a regular school.

When the producers of the Harry Potter movies did their countrywide search, they did like a basically country wide search to find Harry Hermione in Ron.

This means they looked across the entire country to find the right actors for these timeless characters.

Here we encounter something called word formation.

How adding a prefix or suffix can change a word's meaning or function.

For example, the suffix wide means throughout or extending across something.

When you add it to a noun like country, you create an adjective that describes the scope or reach of something.

For example, worldwide, across the entire world.

There's a citywide curfew tonight, company wide.

So when Emma says countrywide search, she means that they searched everywhere in Britain, not just in London, for example.

By the way, word formation like this is super useful for you to add thousands of new words to your vocabulary.

I had this weird, weighted, fated sense of destiny pretty much from the moment that they said they mentioned the audition.

When something feels weighted, it feels heavy with significance.

Emma is describing this intense, almost overwhelming feeling that this audition was meant to be.

A talisman is an object believed to bring good luck or protection.

Emma mentions one of these being Beanie babies in the 90s.

Lots of kids, including myself, collected these plush toys.

People often carry talismans during important moments, like a lucky coin before an exam or a special piece of jewelry at a job interview.

And on long car journeys, we'd often drive back and forwards to France.

This phrase means to travel repeatedly between two places.

Emma would make the journey from England to France and back again multiple times with her dad.

You might also hear people say back and forth, which means the same thing.

Lois playing a hunch for an hour is one thing, but for four hours.

And that endless driving back and forth and back and forth.

By the way, listen again and pay attention to Emma's grammar here.

My dad had been reading them to me before bed when I would spend the weekends with him and on long car journeys.

This is the past perfect continuous tense.

We use it to talk about an action that started in the past, continued for a period of time and was still going on or had just finished before another past action.

In Emma's case, her dad's reading was an ongoing repeated activity that happened over time during her childhood.

It wasn't just one night, but a continuous habit.

It's especially useful for telling stories.

I was exhausted because I'd been studying all night before the exam.

They had been dating for two years before they got engaged.

She'd been working at the company for five years when she got promoted.

The key difference from simple past perfect is that the continuous form focuses on the duration of the activity, not just its completion.

Now let's check out some connected speech.

That's how we natives cut, reduce and connect our words and fluent speech.

Check out how Emma said we'd often drive back and forwards to France and that's how the time would be passed.

And almost always reduce this to just an unsound influenced speech like in cat and dog OR M&MS.

So rather than saying back and forwards, she links the reduced un to back and we hear back and forwards.

Your speaking will only improve with lots of practice.

So try to listen to Emma again and say it just like she did.

We'd often drive back and forwards to France.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Learn English with PODCASTS — How Emma Watson Became Hermione

weird

intense

pronunciation

intimacy