Emma Watson plays Noah’s adopted daughter Ila in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming biblical epic Noah and she’s been busy promoting the film ahead of its March 28 release. In a new interview with the AP, Watson talked about her own religious affiliation.
Watson told AP she’s not necessary religious – but spiritual.
“I already had the sense that I was someone who was more spiritual than specifically religious,” she said. “I'm really interested in those things that are more far-reaching than culture, nationality, race, religion.”
She admitted she wasn’t convinced Aronofsky could tell this biblical story but when she read the script from him and Ari Handel, she was convinced.
"Darren does these very dark, very intense, very gritty, very real films and then Noah is kind of — you see this guy with the long beard and there's the animals. ... You can't really picture it,” she admitted.
Now, however, "I think it's a really original take on a genre, on a story, on an idea,” adding to those who have criticized the film for straying from the original story, “If we had gone with exactly the original story, Noah doesn't say anything until he steps off the ark. You would have been watching a silent film. None of the women are really spoken about in the biblical story. There wouldn't of been any women in it."
She added, "He had to adapt it for the screen."
Watson also told Reuters that spending most of her childhood shooting Harry Potter films really prepared her for the physicality of this role.
"It's kind of comforting in a way to know that in some senses, nothing will be as hard as that again, and I'm pretty prepared for most things people can throw at me, whether it be animals, water, stunts, CGI (computer-generated imagery), whatever it is," she said. "It was a very good school in a way and set me up very well for this kind of environment and this kind of pressure."