Harry Potter star Katie Leung says she was instructed by publicists to deny the existence of hate websites about her after she was cast as Cho Chang in the hit franchise.
The 33-year-old Scottish-born actress, who is of Chinese descent, made her comments on the Chinese Chippy Girl podcast on Monday, March 8.
Katie made her debut as Cho, Harry Potter’s love interest, in the fourth movie in the hit franchise, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was released in 2005. After her casting was leaked by the U.K. tabloids a year prior, hate posts about the then-16-year-old actress were published on Harry Potter fan sites and an entire website condemning her casting was even created.
“I was like, Googling myself at one point and I was on this website which was dedicated to kind of Harry Potter fandom and I remember reading all the comments. It was a lot of racist s–t,” Leung said on the podcast. “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.”