Actress Katie Leung who played the role of Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series shared her experience facing racist attacks on the online forum when she was filming for the popular series. In a podcast, she revealed that her publicists told her to deny what was happening if she were ever asked.
"I was Googling myself at one point, and I was on this website, which was kind of dedicated to the Harry Potter fandom. I remember reading all the comments. And, yeah, it was a lot of racist shit," she said during the podcast.
Katie Leung was born in Scotland but is of Chinese descent. She was 16 when she was cast in the Harry Potter films. She had not received any professional training before doing venturing out there as a celebrity. She shared that her publicists told her to deny that the racist attacks which were happening.
Deny the racist attacks
"I remember them saying to me, 'Oh, look Katie, we haven't seen these, these websites that people are talking about. And you know, if you get asked that, just say it's not true. Say it's not happening,'" she said. "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.'"
"I was really f**ing grateful that I was in the position I was in," Leung said. "I keep saying, 'Oh I wish I'd maybe said something.' But you can't do that."
Katie Leung had prominently featured in Goblet of Fire, and Order Of The Phoenix. In the later series, her character Cho had been present but as a supporting cast. In the original books of Harry Potter, the character Cho Chang had been the first girlfriend of Harry Potter with whom the protagonist had shared his first kiss under the mistletoe.
