It’s back to the broomstick for Hermione Granger.
Emma Watson is speaking out for the first time since she was banned from driving in the UK for six months.
The “Harry Potter” star addressed the surprising penalty during a new episode of Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast, which was released on Wednesday.
“I recently started riding a bicycle,” Watson, 35, began with a laugh. “Yes, I started riding a bicycle before my driving ban, but now it’s particularly fortuitous that I also ride a bicycle for that reason.”
“Oh my God, I was getting phone calls, like it’s on the BBC, it’s on international worldwide news,” she added of the ban becoming “mainstream” news. “I was like, my shame is everywhere.”
The “Little Women” actress was prohibited from driving for six months back in July, one year after she received a speeding infraction in Oxford, England, for going 38 mph in a 30 mph zone.
Because Watson already had nine points on her license before the violation, she was ordered to pay around $1,400 in fines and agree not to get behind the wheel for half a year.
But the incident was not without its silver lining, because the former child star revealed that she started receiving messages from those slapped with the same punishment for driving over the speed limit.
“I think, in a funny way, what the sweetest result of it was getting so many messages from people being like, ‘It happened to me too. I feel you. This is awful. It sucks,’” she shared. “Which was kind of nice in a way. ‘Do you need a lift?’ I was like, actually, yes.”
Although Watson didn’t defend her speeding ticket and subsequent driving ban, she did explain that it was a result of her “awkward transition” away from acting, especially because she was never allowed to drive herself to set for insurance reasons.
“So I went from basically only driving myself on weekends or during holidays to then, when I became a student, driving myself all the time,” the “Beauty and the Beast” star, who is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at Oxford University, said.
“And yeah, I did not have the experience or skills, clearly, which I now will and do,” Watson added.
The English actress, meanwhile, admitted that it is “humbling” to go from doing “extremely complex tasks” for a role to then be unable to complete “pretty basic life things” like driving a car without speeding.
“I’m like, ‘Okay, Emma, you seem to be unable to remember keys, unable to keep yourself at 30 miles an hour in a 30-mile speed limit. You don’t seem able to do some pretty basic life things,’” she joked.
“I had days where I just wanted to turn around to people and be like, ‘I used to be good at things, OK? I used to be really good at things! I know it doesn’t look like that right now, but I used to,’” Watson added.
Elsewhere during Shetty’s new podcast episode, the “Perks of Being a Wallflower” star opened up about her struggle to make friends in Hollywood after her time on “Harry Potter” came to an end.
“I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I think I had developed on ‘Harry Potter,’ which was that the people I worked with were going to be my family and that we were going to be lifelong friends,” Watson explained while fighting back tears.
“I came to work looking for friendship and that was a very painful experience for me outside of ‘Harry Potter’ and in Hollywood, like bone-breakingly painful because most people don’t come to those environments looking for friendships,” she added.
Watson portrayed Hermione Granger alongside Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) in all eight “Harry Potter” films from 2001 to 2011.
She and her co-stars became close during the more than decade-long experience, and it broke Watson’s heart when she realized that her experience on other projects wouldn’t be the same.
“It’s so unusual to make a set of films for 12 years, and we were a community,” she noted. “We really were. And so I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces, and I just got my ass kicked. I really did.”
The actress ultimately stepped away from acting following 2019’s “Little Women,” but hasn’t left the industry for good.
“I don’t feel quite that kind of urgency of needing to do it,” she explained. “I’ll never say that i’ll quit acting. I’ll always be an actor. I’m still open to doing it again.”
As for the controversy surrounding “Harry Potter” creator JK Rowling and her anti-trans views, Watson said that she believes “no one is disposable.”
Watson and Radcliffe, 36, previously spoke out against Rowling, 60, after the author penned an essay criticizing trans rights. The pair’s relationship with Rowling has been strained ever since.
“There is just no world in which I could ever cancel her out for, or cancel that out, for anything,” she shared regarding her past professional relationship with Rowling. “It has to remain true – it is true.”
“I can love her, I can know she loved me, I can be grateful to her, I can know the things that she said are true, and there can be this whole other thing,” Watson added. “My job feels like just holding all of it, but the bigger thing is just what she’s done will never be taken away from me.”
