Speaking on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast this week, the 35-year-old actor pushed back on the idea that marriage should happen on a timeline. “I’m just so happy not to be divorced yet,” she told Shetty, according to Insider. “That sounds like a really negative answer, but I think we’re being pressured and forced into this thing that I believe is a kind of miracle.”
Watson said tying self-worth to marriage creates unrealistic and unfair standards, especially for young women. “It’s such a violence, and it’s such a cruelty on people and especially young people I think to make, and especially women, to make them feel like they haven’t succeeded yet in life because they haven’t forced to its culmination something that I just don’t think can or should ever be forced,” she explained.
She described marriage as “the least romantic thing I can possibly think of” when it comes from outside pressure. If she had married earlier, she said, “it would have been carnage.”
The Harry Potter star added that lasting relationships take time and effort to build. “I have really sat with myself in a lot of discomfort and asked myself a lot of very difficult questions to be at that point. It hasn’t happened to me yet,” she said.
Watson’s comments are similar to experiences shared by other celebrities of high esteem, like Kim Kardashian, who once admitted that her short-lived marriage to Kris Humphries was partly driven by pressure to get married before turning 30. “At the time, I just thought, ‘Holy shit, I’m 30 years old. I’d better get this together. I’d better get married,’” Kardashian said on Watch What Happens Live in 2017. She later admitted she knew on her honeymoon that the marriage “wasn’t going to work out.”
Actress Emma Watson, who skyrocketed to fame after being cast in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, has also clashed with the author over politics and feminism. Watson has made it clear she disagrees with Rowling’s stance that men cannot become women, aligning instead with her co-star Daniel Radcliffe. Until recently, Rowling had avoided commenting directly on her former cast members’ remarks, but on Monday she broke her silence.
Rowling slammed Watson for what she described as “ignorant” comments, suggesting the actress’ privileged background makes it easier for her to dismiss the concerns of ordinary women. Rowling has consistently defended single-sex spaces and spoken out against what she sees as the erosion of women’s rights. By contrast, Watson has promoted a broader version of feminism that includes transgender women and has even spoken about subjects like masturbation as part of her advocacy.
