Katie Leung Opens Up About Facing Racist Abuse After Being Cast In Harry Potter As Cho Chang

| Published: Friday, March 12, 2021, 11:57 [IST]

Actress Katie Leung recently appeared on the Chinese Chippy Girl podcast and opened up about the backlash she faced online, after being cast as Hogwarts witch Cho Chang in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Katie who was 16 at the time said, "I was, like, googling myself at one point, and I was on this website, which was kind of dedicated to the kind of Harry Potter fandom. "I remember reading all the comments. And, yeah, it was a lot of racist sh*t," Katie added.

The backlash reportedly began after photos of her shooting at the sets had leaked in the papers. "It had got to the papers and then someone secretly took a photo of me," she remembered. "I just broke down. I just started crying."

"And then somebody had actually created a website, a hate site Â- it was like, if you disagree with this casting, then click on this button and then it would just be like a count of how many people disagreed with the casting and you would just see a number. I know, it's awful. It's so awful," Leung added.

She revealed that she had reached out to a publicist to talk about it, but she was told to keep it away from the press. "I remember them saying to me, 'Oh, look Katie, we haven't seen these, these websites that people are talking about'."

Katie who is now 33 years old, revealed that she was in denial and added, "And you know, if you get asked that just say it's not true, say it's not happening.'"

"Looking back...I put it to the back of my mind. I don't know if that is the best way to deal with it, but that is naturally what I did in order to move on and be a good actor," she added.

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