Jessie Cave, who starred as Lavender Brown in the Harry Potter films, has candidly opened up about her experience on set, and how it changed for her once she gained weight. In example 1937291 of the impossible standards Hollywood puts on women…
In a recent interview about her debut novel with The Independent, Cave reflected on her first major acting role. She starred as Lavender Brown in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009), followed by The Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, which premiered in 2010 and 2011, respectively.
“I gained a lot of weight after doing Harry Potter [And The Half Blood Prince], just because I wasn’t starving myself,” Cave told the newspaper. “And I was growing up and that’s just what happens.”
Growing up on shows like Friends, where Rachel, Monica and Phoebe were all thin, Cave already felt the pressure to be skinny as a young woman.
So when the actor turned writer, illustrator, and podcaster returned to film the last two movies in the franchise, she said she was “treated like a different species.”
“It was horrible. It was probably more me and my insecurity, knowing that I wasn’t fitting into the same size jeans, but it wasn’t a time where actresses were any bigger than a size eight. And in the previous film I had been, and now I was a size 12. So that was horrible. It was a really uncomfortable experience.”
Cave said she felt “invisible” after she gained weight.
“Since then, it’s made me have weird issues with weight and work. And it’s so fucked up, but it’s just how it is. Women have to deal with that all the time.”
Cave said acting is the “most toxic relationship” out there, because unless you’re doing well it’s just constant rejection after rejection.
“It’s like getting ghosted a thousand times a year and it kind of sends you crazy,” she explained.
“I definitely went crazy in my early 20s, thinking, ‘But they said they liked me and that I was perfect for it?’ But then you realise there’s 100 other girls who are as good as you if not better, maybe prettier, maybe thinner, and they’re perfect for it.”
Sunset is Cave’s debut novel about sisters Ruth and Hannah, who build themselves up as much as they tear each other down. They’re inseparable until a disastrous holiday leaves one sister heartbroken and alone.
The novel is described as a comedy about love, grief, and reconciliation.
In other words, get the tissues ready because this book sounds like it’ll hurt.
