As a fan of the novel, I was elated to hear the news that a new film adaption of the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was not only in the works, but loaded with all sorts of talent.

Greta Gerwig was hired to write the screenplay and in 2018 she was announced as the director. Emma Stone was originally slated to play one of the main characters, Meg March, but she was replaced by Emma Watson before filming began. Watson, a brilliant actress in her own right, would have been a good fit if not for one thing: the story is about a group of American sisters that come of age in Concord, Massachusetts, and Watson maintained her British accent.

Adapted characters from books to movies should fit the general outline of their character from the original book unless there is a compelling reason to reimagine them. Although Jane Austen herself was British, Little Women is an American story. The problem isn’t that Watson is a British actress, the problem is that she’s a British actress who can’t perform with the correct accent for her role. Watson’s character, Meg, is the only one with an non-American accent in the entire film, making it stick out in a glaring obvious way, especially when the film centers on her and her sisters and none of the rest of them sound like they lived a whole extra life in another country.

Watson clearly is not untalented: she’s acted in highly acclaimed movies such as “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and the Harry Potter franchise, but that doesn’t make her the perfect choice for any film requiring a strong female lead, and she wasn’t the right choice for this particular movie. The problem could have been fixed by making creative choices that would provide nuance to the film but that still made sense. The choice to move forward with Watson as Meg after knowing she couldn’t perform with an American accent was a poor one. Watson did a good job portraying her character, but her acting skills are not worth distracting from the movie and not fulfilling her role.

Watson shouldn’t be cast in roles unless she is able to adjust and act with the proper accent, which, for an actress of her skill level, has to be in her wheelhouse. This is not the first time that her accent has felt out of place. She also acted as Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and was again the only character with a British accent. Creative liberties can add new life to old stories and bring them into the modern age, but when the choices make no sense and don’t add value, they have a negative effect.
Starting with the “why” for the change yields the best results: in the musical Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda cast people of color to play the roles of many white historical figures in his retelling of the story of Alexander Hamilton. He is on the record sharing about how he did this in order to reflect the racial diversity we now have in America. His casting choices made sense and had a purpose, but the same cannot be said for Emma Watson in Little Women, likely because the “why” didn’t have to do with enhancing the story, it had to do with including Watson at any cost. She’s great, but she’s not everything, and in this case, her presence was not required to bring the magic of the book to life.