“I remember being very curious about what people were saying about me, and I was Googling myself,” says Katie Leung, who will be seen next on “Bridgerton.”

*Harry Potter *star remembers racist bullying after getting cast: ‘It affected me’

"I remember being very curious about what people were saying about me, and I was Googling myself," says Katie Leung, who will be seen next on "Bridgerton."

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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January 8, 2026 4:07 p.m. ET

Katie Leung in 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'. Credit:

Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett Collection

Starring in the *Harry Potter* films wasn't always magical for one of the actors.

Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang across five of the movies, remembers experiencing a lot of racist bullying online after she was cast to play the love interest for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) in the fourth film. Looking back on it now, she doesn't know if she ever actually dealt with the trauma at the time.

"It was overwhelming from the get-go," Leung said in a new interview with *The Guardian*. "Being in the spotlight from that age, when you're already insecure, was difficult, to say the least... At the time, I was having a lot of fun. I thought: this is different from school, and I really did not enjoy school. So it was a way to escape. I’m still trying to figure it out, really, how it affected me."

Leung, now 38, made her big screen debut in 2005's *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*. She was excited about her first major role in the popular franchise, but before she began filming, news of her casting leaked online, leading to harassment and racist, hateful comments.

Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty

"I don’t know if anything could have been done back then to make things better or easier," Leung said. "At that age, you're curious. I remember being very curious about what people were saying about me, and I was Googling myself. Nobody could have stopped me, because I was old enough to make up my own mind."

Leung added that she "didn't" know how to cope or deal with the hurtful things people were saying about her online.

"I think it just sat with me, and it affected me in ways like, 'Oh yeah, I made that decision because people were saying this about me,'" she said. "It probably made me less outgoing. I was very self-aware of what was coming out of my mouth... For the longest time, I may have tried to make up for it, and overcompensate."

Leung revealed that she only agreed to go to the open audition for *Harry Potter* in the hopes that it would bring her divorced parents back together, *Parent Trap*-style. She thought she had no chance in actually getting the role.

"My mum and dad hadn’t seen each other for a long time, but I was really excited, because I guess in my 16-year-old mind there was still a possibility that they might get back together," Leung said.

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She'll next be seen starring in season 4 of *Bridgerton* (premiering Jan. 29) as the cold aristocrat Lady Araminta Gun, the cold and scheming stepmother to the Cinderella-like diamond ingénue of the ton, Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha).

“It feels quite familiar, in a sense," Leung said of stepping into the world of Netflix's regency era romance series after debuting in *Harry Potter*. "Also I’m older, and at a place in my life where I’m not too fazed going into something seemingly so huge... I’m envious of the younger generation who are getting to see people that represent them on screens now. I know it would have done me good."

Leung applauds *Bridgerton*'s groundbreaking "color-conscious" casting, the term coined by creator Shonda Rhimes to describe the inclusive and diverse cast.

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"Their inclusion and diversity behind and in front of the camera is just ... " Leung said with a smile. "You can see it and feel it, and that made me feel really safe to be able to kind of play as an actor. The more we can have it, the less of a thing it becomes. But for now, we’re kind of in the middle of it. The reason it’s successful is because the writing is great, the directing is great, the acting, the relationships between the characters."

Now as a mother herself, Leung is better prepared for any kind of online backlash, harassment, or bullying over landing a role on a massive franchise.**

"I still care about the craft [of acting], I still want to do well, but I can park it once I’m done for the day and go home and live this other life," she said. "It’s more like a job for me than the be-all and end-all, which is how I felt about acting when I was in my 20's."

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