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Celebrity

13th Oct 2022

Tom Felton says he always had a “secret love” for Emma Watson

Ellen Fitzpatrick

Our hearts.

Harry Potter actor Tom Felton has recently opened up about his “secret love” for Emma Watson in his new book.

The pair were co-stars on the Harry Potter film series for 10 years, with Tom playing Draco Malfoy and Emma playing Hermione Grainger.

With many fans speculating the two had a secret love affair for years, Tom put the rumours to rest in his book Beyond The Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard.

Reflecting on his relationship with Emma, he admitted that they didn’t initially start off as close as they are now and grew to have a special bond.

After denying there was anything more than friendship between them, Tom admitted: “I loved and admired her as a person in a way I could never explain to anybody else.”

Looking back on the day of their audition, when he was 11 and Emma was 9, he told the story of Emma asking what the boom microphone was, to which he replied: “It means they are recording us, obviously.”

He went on to say: “My relationship with Emma did not start well. She’d have been forgiven for not wanting much to do with me. It got worse.”

Another time, he recalled that Emma had come up with “a little dance show in her dressing room that she wanted to present to [the cast] at lunchtime” and they had been “dismissive” of this.

“We were predictably dismissive,” Tom said. “We sniggered our way down to Emma’s show and the sniggers grew louder as she danced. We were just being s***** boys, largely out of awkwardness and because we thought taking the p*** was cool. I did feel like a bit of a d**k, and rightly so.”

“In the end, it was up to one of the hair and make-up ladies to tell me what was what.”

Then came the best part, where he admitted there may have been something more between the two.

“I’ve always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear. That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times,” he said.

“Rumours started to abound that there was more to our relationship than we were letting on. I denied that I liked her in that way, but the truth was different.

“My girlfriend at the time knew straight away that there was something unspoken between us. I remember using the familiar old line, ‘I love her like a sister.’ But there was more to it than that.

“I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anybody else… we were kindred spirits. I know for certain I’ll always have Emma’s back and she’ll always have mine too.”