Beauty and the Beast: Emma Watson walks us through 'Belle boot camp'

Belle (Emma Watson) has a heart-to-heart with the enchanted household staff – Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), and Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson.) “Beast and Belle find their common ground because they both feel really lonely. They both feel like outsiders in their own world,” Watson says. “Belle is trapped in her surroundings, in her village, and Beast is trapped in this castle. There’s this sort of strange mirroring.”

Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as Beast, recreating the famous ballroom dance from the animated film. “I had never danced for a movie before,” Watson says. “I kind of went into this boot camp for three months before we started shooting, which was singing four times a week, dancing five times a week, riding [horses] three times a week. Yeah, I did Belle boot camp.”

Luke Evans’ Gaston is especially good at expectorating, but that doesn’t set Belle’s heart a-flutter. “Gaston is someone who has had nothing but love and admiration and easiness and because he’s never suffered he doesn’t have any empathy,” Watson says. “He’s essentially a narcissist… With Beast, you can tell he’s being unkind because he’s unkind to himself.”

Emma Watson as Belle, riding Philippe through the snowy woods that surround Beast’s enchanted castle. Her version of Belle has an action-hero element. “I feel so blessed to have already played one of my childhood heroes, which was Hermione, and then to get to play another one… I feel like that’s almost unique to an actress to get to do that,” Watson says.

Music supervisor Matt Sullivan, director Bill Condon and Emma Watson on the village set of the movie. “With actors who get to choose their roles, you look at their resumes and you start to see a kind of autobiography emerge,” Condon says. “From what I’d already seen of Emma, she seemed to be the person both onscreen and off, who best reflected the qualities that Belle embodied. There’s no question Emma has a better sense of where feminism stands right now and what’s relevant with regard to women’s issues than I ever will.”

To read more on Emma Watson and Beauty and the Beast, stay tuned to EW.com and pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now – and subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.