Emma Watson Admits Her Connection To Tom Felton Is One Of The ‘Purest Loves’ In Foreword To His Memoir
Ahead of Tom Felton’s memoir hitting the shelves, Emma Watson writes that she and her fellow ‘Harry Potter’ star ‘love each other in a special way.’
“As you’ll read in this book, our relationship didn’t start well,” Emma Watson wrote about her friendship with Tom Felton in the introduction to his book, Beyond the Wand: The Magic & Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard (out Oct. 18 from Grand Central Publishing.) In the opening, Emma, 32, said that despite this rocky beginning, she and Tom, 35, would grow to be “soulmates” and dear friends over the course of their time on the Harry Potter films. “When we first met, I was a moony and probably rather annoying nine-year-old girl who followed him round like a puppy, desperate for his attention,” writes Emma, per Seventeen.
“But, as he has written so eloquently, beautifully, and generously in this book, our friendship didn’t end there. Thank goodness it blossomed and endured,” added Watson. “Like Tom, I always struggle to explain to people the nature of our connection and relationship. For more than twenty years now, we’ve loved each other in a special way,” she continued. “It’s one of the purest loves I can think of. We’re soulmates, and we’ve always had each other’s backs. I know we always will. It makes me emotional to think about it.”
Despite this connection, Tom and Emma never took that relationship beyond that “pure” level. “I’ve always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear,” Tom writes in his memoir. “That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times.” The actor behind Draco Malfoy said that “rumors” of a romance started around the time he was 15 and she was 12 and that he “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,” writes Tom. After reflecting on the relationship, he notes that he doesn’t think he was ever romantically “in love” with Emma but that he did love her and “admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anybody else.”
In January 2022, Emma spoke about the bond with Tom to British Vogue, saying that she and Tom “speak most weeks.” She also said that it was “sweet” that Potter fans obsess over her and Tom’s friendship.