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Katie Leung (Cho Chang) on life after Potter

By Dan Selcke

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Katie Leung, best known to Harry Potter fans as Cho Chang, sounds off on type-casting, her new drama One Child, and Call of Duty.

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It’s been several years since audiences last saw actress Katie Leung on the big screen as Cho Chang, but Leung has no trouble remembering her time filming the Harry Potter movies. “I was so innocent and naive,” she told The Herald in a recent interview. “I think that allowed me to enjoy the moment of being a teenager, part of this massive franchise and not really having a worry in the world. If I was given the chance to go back and relive it, I would probably try to absorb everything around me a bit more.”

That naivete may actually have come in handy after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out and a certain contingent of fans who, envious of Leung’s role as Daniel Radcliffe’s love interest, waged a smear campaign against her, which included an I Hate Katie website and no small number of racist comments. “Looking back I can’t remember much about that part of it because I was so in denial of what was happening,” Leung said. “I put it to the back of my mind. I don’t know if that is the best way to deal with it, but that is naturally what I did in order to move on and be a good actor.”

Happily, that’s all in the past. By and large, Leung is very thankful for the Harry Potter fandom, since many of them stuck with her after the movie series was over and come to see her in other projects. “They come to see my plays and contact me through social media,” she said. “When they go to one of my shows that isn’t Potter I get really excited. They have been so supportive and I’m grateful for that.”

And what non-Potter projects is she involved in? The next one is One Child, a BBC drama in which Leung plays an astrophysics student named Mei Ashley. Adopted as a baby from a Chinese orphanage by an English-American couple, Mei grew up in the U.K. but travels to China after she gets an urgent call from her birth mother, whom she’s never met. The story examines the effects of China’s controversial one-child policy, which began in 1978 and only ended last year.

It’s a meaty role for Leung, and one she’s thrilled to play, but she does sometimes worry about type-casting. “I have really enjoyed everything I’ve done, but it would be great to play a character that is not down to the colour of my skin because I feel that’s the only way that people are going to watch a Chinese person on television and see I’m not an immigrant or someone who talks with a funny accent,” she said. “If I could just be who I am, to play a version of myself, that would get rid of ignorance.”

Leung is a proponent of increasing diversity on screen so that TV and movies more accurately reflect the real world. Naturally, she’s a big fan of the choice to cast black actress Noma Dumezweni in the role of Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, both because it goes against stereotyping and because she’s a fan of Dumezweni’s work, having run across her in the theater community. Leung offers up several examples of casual racism she encounters in her daily life (for example, complete strangers will greet her with “ni hao,” or “konnichiwa” despite the fact that she’s a native English speaker simply because those are the only Chinese or Japanese words they know), so it’s no wonder she’s lobbying for greater representation for minorities onscreen.

Next: Harry Potter and the Order of the Archeypes: Ron, the Sidekick

Also, she says she’s a videogame geek who loves Call of Duty. Awesome.

For the full interview, head over to The Herald.

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