‘Don’t even know who that is or what this book is’: Bonnie Wright shares her stunning lack of ‘Harry Potter’ knowledge before deciding to audition

You might not know the name Bonnie Wright, but there’s a pretty good chance you know her character Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. Turns out Wright actually knew very little about the Harry Potter world before she decided to audition for one of the most popular franchises of all time.

Wright appeared on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast to tell the surprising news about her audition for the role. It was actually her brother, she said, who told her she looks just like Ginny.

“He was really specific. People had heard they were making them into movies and he was like ‘you need to go for the role Ginny Weasley.’ I was like ‘okay, don’t even know who that is or like what this book is but it sounds fun.'”

She didn’t go in completely blind, though. She read the first book before her first audition at least.

“Which Ginny isn’t really in at all,” she said. “So I didn’t really get a sense of her. She obviously comes through more in the second book.”

The reason she went was mostly because she “looked up to her brother massively” as opposed to being a fan of the series. “I’m grateful he had that great casting ability.”

It is pretty remarkable that her brother just mentioned, “Hey, go audition,” and she did and ended up getting the role, which wasn’t an open casting, by the way.

“[My parents] came home from work and we were like ‘we want to find out how to get an audition in Harry Potter.'” Her parents couldn’t really help as they didn’t know anyone who worked in entertainment.

Her mother was determined to help anyway. She called the publishers of the book in the U.K. and “they gave her the casting director’s number.” She called and the director said, “Okay, sure, if you want to send in some pictures of Bonnie, that would be great.”

They also asked her to write a few sentences about why she wanted the role. She was nine at the time and doesn’t really remember what she wrote, but she said it wasn’t really that important.

It actually only took two auditions for her to snag the role. Also, Ginny didn’t have any lines in the first movie, but director Christopher Columbus gave her one line the day of shooting. That line? Saying “Good Luck” to Harry.

In the audition, she actually read Hermione’s lines “because they didn’t have any other scenes for me to read.”

She nailed it though, and things turned out just fine for her.