Star trolled for Harry Potter role discusses protecting mental health

Her casting as the love interest of Harry Potter in the blockbuster movie franchise saw her subjected to hateful online abuse.

Now, Scots actress Katie Leung has said she has taken an entirely different approach to her current role in what is thought to be the most expensive animated TV series ever made.

Leung has voiced one of the leading characters in Netflix animation Arcane, which is said to have cost a record £10million per episode.

Based on a hugely popular computer game, her character – Caitlyn - has been voiced by another actress for years with fans likely to have formed very definite ideas about how the role should be portrayed.

However, Leung, 37, has said that she consciously avoided being drawn into any expectations or details of how the character has been played before.

Leung endured horrific cyber bullying and racist abuse after her part in the Harry Potter movies was announced.

Now, in an interview about her current role, she said she was conscious not to try and 'please everyone' in order to protect her mental health.

In an interview with Esports, Leung said: ‘[I] was conscious not to do too much research on Caitlyn because there are so many different interpretations.

‘Having played a character before where it was based on the adaptation of a book… I know that would be kind of the wrong way to go down for me.’

She added: ‘For mental health reasons, because it would just not serve me as an actor to kind of try and please everyone, basically.’

Leung endured a vitriolic hate campaign online after she took on the role of Cho Chang in the Wizarding franchise.

Speaking about the issue on a podcast in 2021, the actress described the backlash she received from people claiming to be Harry Potter fans when news of her role emerged.

She had said: ‘I was like, Googling myself at one point and I was on this website, which was kind of dedicated to the Harry Potter fandom, and I remember reading all the comments. It was a lot of racist s***.

‘And then somebody had actually created a website, a hate site — 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.’

Dundee-born Leung, who said she didn’t have any media training at the time, has claimed she approached a publicist about the online abuse, but was told not to talk about it to the press.

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She recalled: ‘I remember them saying to me, “Oh look, Katie, we haven’t seen these websites that people are talking about. And if you get asked, then just say it’s not true. Say it’s not happening.”

‘And I just nodded my head. I was like, “Okay, Okay,” even though I had seen it myself with my own eyes. I was like, “Okay, yeah, I’ll just say everything’s great.”’

Cho Chang was Harry's first crush - and his first kiss.

In the Order Of The Phoenix the character sobbed through a kiss with Harry, but any budding romance was abandoned after she betrayed Dumbledore's Army.

And if the success of Harry Potter wasn't, Leung's part in Arcane sees her involved in yet another hugely popular show. 

The animated series made by video game company Riot Games has become the highest rated Netflix show of all time - knocking Squid Game off the top spot.

Based on the video game League of Legends, it secured a 98/100 score on IMDB - the highest for any Netflix original - and was also the most watched show of all-time on the streaming service within three days of its release

While many British viewers won't be aware of it, the show, which is about two orphaned sisters fighting civil unrest in the fictional cities of Piltover and Zaun, debuted at number one on the Netflix charts in 37 countries.