Emma Watson plays Sam in her first major role since she completed the Harry Potter films that made her a star at the tender age of 11. “To me, Sam is the perfect girl,” says Chbosky. “Emma is absolutely luminous in the role. She took it very seriously. It took about five minutes for me to realize that she was the perfect person for the character and the movie. She grew up in the middle of a hurricane, and she did it with such grace and such class, but there is this loneliness about her. I knew when I met her that this was a part of her that was just dying to come out. She just needed permission.”
Watson was studying at Brown University when she received the script. Unfamiliar with the novel, she mentioned it to several friends and discovered they were huge fans. “I was actually crying when I finished the script,” says Watson. “There’s no way that you won’t be able to relate to the experiences of the characters. I didn’t need to go to an American high school or attend prom to be able to relate to Sam—or Charlie or Brad or any of the characters.”
After almost a decade of playing Hermione Granger, Watson was well aware of the risks involved in bringing a beloved fictional character to life. “I sometimes felt like I’d jumped straight from one frying pan into another,” she admits. “People seem to care just as much about Sam as they do Harry Potter. It’s a great deal of pressure to try and embody a character that people already love and identify with. I just hope that it lives up to people’s expectations and that we do justice to a brilliant book.”
Having Chbosky at the helm gave her confidence that they were doing just that. “There is such a pure line of connection,” she says. “Steve had a complete vision for the movie. He had been dreaming about making it for over ten years. The man had every shot planned out in his head. He knew how he wanted everything to look and feel and I had absolute faith in him because it’s his world.”
Each of the characters faces a crisis in the story, according to Watson. “There isn’t a single character that doesn’t have an arc or that isn’t fully developed. They are dealing with some quite difficult, serious stuff, but it’s always juxtaposed with something humorous, so hopefully we will make audiences laugh and cry in equal measure.”
And Sam is able to learn from Charlie as much as he does from her. “He has been through a pretty rough time,” she notes. “But he is the sweetest, most sensitive soul you’ll ever meet. Sam and Patrick try to shepherd him through the first year of high school, which we all know can be intimidating. Sam is one of these kids in school who feels like she constantly has to be up and party like crazy. That gets exhausting after awhile. With Charlie, she can finally be herself around someone else.”
The actress speaks of her co‐stars with affection and great respect. “It was such fun working with Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller because we have the same kind of bond in real life,” she says. “It made the work not really feel like work. Logan is going to break hearts in this movie. He’s devastating. He innately understands Charlie. And Ezra’s so funny. Getting to adlib with him was a dream. I thought I had energy, but he’s on another level entirely. He’s the perfect casting for Patrick.”
The director has equally high praise for Watson. “Emma threw herself into that character and she never looked back,” says Chbosky. “She has so much passion, so much professionalism, so much artistic integrity that it inspired me. She took a big risk with this movie. And she embraced every part of it. She found the character, and she was brilliant.”
Patrick is Sam’s best friends as well as her stepbrother. He is witty, utterly unconventional and larger than life. “Patrick is a clown and a smart ass, but he will always stick up for whoever who needs sticking up for,” says Chbosky. “He is what I consider a guy’s guy, even though he’s gay. It was important to me in writing the character, and then casting Ezra Miller, that in this movie the gay kid be the coolest one, and he’s the strongest one. He’s the one that Charlie wants to be. Ezra Miller played him perfectly.”
At only 19, Miller is quickly amassing an impressive body of work, playing complex characters in the recent films We Need to Talk About Kevin and Another Happy Day. He claims that his first reaction to the script was, “Holy mother of Jehovah!”
“The Perks Of Being A Wallflower was a seminal book for me and a lot of my close friends when we were starting high school,” he adds. “It’s youth incarnate. Adolescence is a time when it is almost impossible to figure out what is going on. There’s a massive void created where the innocence and wonder of childhood used to be. There are lessons we all must learn and they’re really hard. A lot of the time, it feels pointless. But if you can maintain your dignity in the face of pain it will power you through the rest of your life.”
Patrick gets through it all because he has a rare understanding of his own identity, according to Miller. “He can stand in the middle of an American high school and acknowledge that he’s gay. Because he and his awesome group of idiosyncratic crazy friends are all struggling to realize their identities, he recognizes that in Charlie.”
Patrick derives much of his strength from Sam, and vice versa, says Miller. “Sam and Patrick are male and female counterparts. Together they make this great personable whole. Their two hearts together can just forge through whatever the situation may be.”
Like their characters, Miller, Watson and Logan forged a lasting bond during the production. “I think Emma and I were bound to know one other,” says the actor. He describes Lerman as “the consummate cinephile who understands every technical aspect of what’s happening. I think he’s not only one of the next important leading men in film, but he will also be a major force behind the camera.”
Expressing his respect for Chbosky, Miller notes how rare it is for an original novelist to be able to carry his vision all the way to the screen as Chbosky has. “But I don’t think that it would have been possible for anyone else to make this film. Steve is a natural director. He would give notes that put everything in perspective and allow the actors to move the scene in the direction he wanted without imposing his vision. He also managed to put together a cast that is like the ultimate chemistry set.”
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