Emma Watson gets a feminist backstory in “Beauty and the Beast”
Disney’s iconic princess from 1991’s Beauty and the Beast just got a feminist twist. Emma Watson, starring as Belle in the live-action remake, revealed to Entertainment Weekly, that her version of Belle has some serious brains.
“In the animated movie, it’s her father who is the inventor, and we actually co-opted that for Belle,” Watson said. She explained further, stating:
“I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books. Also what is she doing with her time?’
“So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”
Oh, hell yes. Now that’s our kind of princess.
Belle, and her father, Maurice’s, backstories are further revealed in another photo posted on Entertainment Weekly’s Instagram. Here we see Kevin Kline as Maurice, tinkering with several music boxes.
In the live-action remake, Maurice, “is making all these music boxes that have to tell the story of Belle not traveling,” stated Katie Spencer, the set director for 2017’s Beauty and the Beast. Maurice is overprotective of his daughter since the loss of her mother, so, as Spencer explained, “we’ve made all these music boxes that represent different countries of the world, so she can see what she’s missing.”
We’re so excited to see how this new plot twist is going to come into play throughout the film. Will Belle invent something to save the Beast (played by Dan Stevens) after his battle with Gaston (played by Luke Evans)? Will the 2017 remake deal with the fact that the plot revolves around Stockholm syndrome?
