'Harry Potter' Star Jessie Cave Says She Was 'Treated Like a Different Species' on Set After Gaining Weight

Jessie Cave is opening up about her time on the set of Harry Potter.

The 34-year-old actress played Lavender Brown in 2009’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and went on to reprise her role in the two final films, 2010′s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

In an interview with The Independent on Wednesday (June 30), Jessie shared that she struggled with her body image on the set of the films.

Click inside to read what she said…

“I gained a lot of weight after doing Harry Potter, just because I wasn’t starving myself,” Jessie told the outlet. “And I was growing up and that’s just what happens.”

The Black Mirror actress explained that when she came back to shoot the seventh and eighth movies, she was “treated like a different species.”

“It was horrible. It was probably more me and my insecurity, knowing that I wasn’t fitting into the same size jeans, but it wasn’t a time where actresses were any bigger than a size 8 [size 6 in the United States]. And in the previous film I had been, and now I was a size 12 [size 10 in the U.S.]. So that was horrible. It was a really uncomfortable experience,” she said.

“But you get a bit bigger, or you’re not as relevant, and it goes off, and you have to make your way in the dark,” she continued. “I definitely felt invisible when I gained a little bit of weight. And since then, it’s made me have weird issues with weight and work. And it’s so f–ked up, but it’s just how it is. Women have to deal with that all the time.”

Jessie added that in some ways she was grateful for gaining weight, as it led her to discover her passion for writing. The actress released her debut novel, Sunset, in June 2021.

“If I’d stayed thin — unnaturally thin, unhappily thin — I would have probably got more acting roles, and then I wouldn’t have started writing,” she explained. “And then I don’t know who I would be now because writing is who I am. I’m almost grateful that I gained all that weight.”

Earlier this year, Jessie‘s newborn son was hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19.