Jessie Cave bulldozed into the spotlight at 20 years old, when she appeared in the sixth Harry Potter as Ron Weasley’s incredibly clingy (but hilariously so) Hogwarts girlfriend, Lavender Brown.
‘I love her,’ Jessie – now 37, and four children later – tells me over a sunny London coffee. ‘It’s incredible how fiercely emotional you are at that age. Is there any great thrill in the world than being obsessed with someone? It’s so powerful.
‘She will never be as hurt as that first rejection, she wears her heart on her sleeve and hasn’t been hurt yet. She just thought, “I should be loved. Why shouldn’t I be loved?”‘
It’s a good question, and one that somehow often passes us adults by. It’s also a lesson Jessie’s four kids have taught her over the years.
‘My kids taught me to like myself a lot more. It’s such a lovely thing. You can’t help but love your mum or dad, you just do,’ Jessie says, revealing that she’s ‘always’ had incredibly low self-esteem, with no obvious root cause.
While Jessie didn’t join the Harry Potter cast until she was an adult, many of the Hogwarts students grew up from a young age on the franchise. Would Jessie want this for her children?
‘The stage mum in me, secretly yes of course. I want my children to be stars,’ she laughs, before turning quite serious.
‘But there is no money in the world that could be paid to let them do it. No chance in hell would they do a job until they are fully fledged adults,’ she says.
‘It just stops everything, you’re frozen in time from when you got that first job. I’ve worked with enough child actors and had enough experience in the industry to see how devastating it can be for your development, and how toxic the industry can be.
‘That doesn’t mean I don’t send them to singing and dance lessons,’ she admits with a chuckle. ‘But there is just no way.’
Jessie certainly isn’t frozen in a wizarding noughties timeline: she’s grown out of her Hogwarts robes through motherhood – and stand-up comedy.
‘[Comedy] was the only reason I got the job [as Lavender Brown] because I made people laugh inmy screen test,’ she says.
Now, Jessie performs stand-up comedy – with many props. Her Edinburgh Fringe show, Jessie Cave: An Ecstatic Display – which explores her chaotic life, which she suspects might be somewhat self-inflicted – aims to help people feel less alone.
Jessie – who plays a ‘heightened version’ of herself on stage – is a self-diagnosed weirdo, you see.
‘I think comedy is me desperately trying to find a place for myself,’ she says.
‘I haven’t ever quite fitted in anywhere and I think I was self-aware enough to know that me not fitting in was amusing. So I made a thing of it.
‘I probably isolated myself further by doing that but comedy has been a great gift to me, allowing me to feel accepted socially. How weird I am is something I am now proud of, rather than deeply ashamed of.’
During Harry Potter, Jessie says she just about fit the actress mould. ‘I was young, thin and I looked the part,’ she says. ‘I was very suitable.
‘But then very quickly I wasn’t – because I am not that. My natural self is bigger, I wear weird glasses and weird clothes.
‘When it was obvious I needed to either conform I felt so weird about it. That was the first time I thought, “Oh, I have to do something different”. That’s when I started comedy, right after the Harry Potter films.’
Just four years after Potter, Jessie also welcomed her eldest at the age of 26.
‘I didn’t really have time to settle in and enjoy my adult rhythm,’ Jessie admits. ‘I’ve grown with [motherhood] so I feel quite lucky. I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t had them.’
She also got obsessed with giving birth in the process. Like, Lavender Brown-obsessed. So much so, Jessie is genuinely hoping to retrain as a midwife.
‘I really love it,’ she laughs. ‘I am obsessed with the whole process. I could listen to birth stories all day. I genuinely want to become a midwife when my kids are in school.’
Looking back, knowing all she knows now, what would Jessie tell 20-year-old her, when she was about to take part in one of the biggest film franchises in history?
‘I would have said wear a crop top more,’ she begins. ‘Eat the f***ing cake.
‘Stop waiting for someone to call you – either romantically or an agent – you need to go and do it yourself.
‘All mad actresses get there eventually, but it takes so long to realise you have to make your own path.’
Jessie Cave: An Ecstatic Display is showing from August 2 to 14, and 16 to 25 at the Assembly Roxy. Tickets here.
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