Jessie Cave Was "Treated Like a Different Species" on 'Harry Potter' Set
The actor opens up about her “uncomfortable” experience due to her weight gain.
Known for her role as Lavender Brown in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, Jessie Cave has now opened up about her “uncomfortable experience” on set.
“I gained a lot of weight after doing Harry Potter, just because I wasn’t starving myself,” the author, comedian and illustrator told The Independent. “And I was growing up and that’s just what happens,” she added. So, when filming the franchises’ last two films, she recalled being treated like “a different species.” Cave adds “in the previous film I had been [a size eight], and now I was a size 12. So that was horrible.”
“It’s the most toxic relationship, acting,” Cave described how her weight gain and acting led to a negative relationship with her weight. “It’s so f*cked up, but it’s just how it is. Women have to deal with that all the time,” she said in regards to her body image issues.
Prior to these issues developing on Harry Potter, Cave, like many others, aspired to have the rail-thin frames of Rachel, Monica and Phoebe from Friends. “They were so thin. And for years I put it down to, ‘Oh they must be naturally small, they’re just lucky.’ And now it’s obvious that they were just so starved,” Cave explained.
On the flip side, weight gain helped navigate Cave to her current career path: “If I’d stayed thin – unnaturally thin, unhappily thin – I would have probably got more acting roles, and then I wouldn’t have started writing. And then I don’t know who I would be now because writing is who I am. I’m almost grateful that I gained all that weight.”
Warner Bros. has yet to comment on the situation. Stay tuned while we wait for more details.
