Katie Leung Walked Away after ‘Harry Potter.’ Now She’s Bridgerton’s Newest Villain.
Katie Leung appeared in five of the eight Harry Potter films. Then she largely disappeared from acting. Now she’s back in a role that couldn’t look more different from Cho Chang: Lady Araminta Gun, a villain in Bridgerton Season 4 and a major antagonist in the romance between Sophie (Yerin Ha) and Benedict (Luke Thompson).
The casting choice is striking on its own. The story behind it — and what it says about where Bridgerton is heading — is what makes it worth a closer look.
Why She Left Acting after ‘Harry Potter’
The path from Harry Potter to Bridgerton was anything but direct. Leung described the psychological aftermath of the franchise in blunt terms.
“I remember coming out of it [Harry Potter] and thinking, ‘Nothing’s going to beat it,’ because it was so successful. I remember being lost, going, ‘What’s next? People will have these high expectations of me topping it, and it’s never going to happen.’ I think I was so afraid of meeting these expectations that I gave up, or didn’t give myself the chance, after it, to try and continue acting,” she told The Guardian in February 2026.
She pivoted to photography and enrolled in a degree program. But towards the end of her studies, she landed a part in a play. On stage, she remembers thinking, “No, actually, this is what I want to do.”
That sent her to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to study drama formally.
The Typecasting That Followed Drama School
A degree from a respected conservatoire didn’t immediately open the doors you’d expect for a Harry Potter alum. For a long stretch after graduating, Leung found herself considered primarily for a narrow band of roles: “these kind of epic tales of the east, whether that be North Korea or China. Deep, dark subject matters.”
She played the child of a Chinese mother adopted by a British-American couple in the BBC drama One Child and an unauthorised migrant in Channel 4’s Run. She didn’t dismiss these parts — she says they gave her “the chance to be more knowledgable about the world, and the injustices that happen around us all the time.”
But the pattern felt limiting. Her own internal narrative made it worse. “It’s one of these things where just because there weren’t many roles out there, I was incredibly grateful to be considered. A large part of that was me, again, giving myself a hard time, thinking I wasn’t deserving of anything.”
That candor about scarcity, gratitude and self-doubt says something specific about what navigating the industry looked like for her during that period. The Bridgerton casting is a clean departure.
How She’s Approaching This One Differently
Joining a production at Bridgerton’s scale isn’t unfamiliar territory for Leung. But her relationship to it has changed.
“I feel really blessed, genuinely,” she told The Guardian. “It feels quite familiar, in a sense. Also I’m older, and at a place in my life where I’m not too fazed going into something seemingly so huge.”
The same person who once spiraled after Harry Potter now describes a massive Netflix show as something she’s “not too fazed” by.
The response to Bridgerton has “been amazing,” Leung told People, and she’s “definitely” down to reprise her role as Lady Araminta Gun in future seasons.
She’s already thinking about what that could look like: “I don’t know what she would do, though, if I came back. She’s had her comeuppance and everything.”
Then she offered her own pitch: “Maybe it’d be something like a new romance for Araminta, because I think that’s what she needs. She needs a bit of love in her life — or a third husband. Or a grandchild!”
All episodes of Season 4 of Bridgerton are out on Netflix now.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
This story was originally published March 2, 2026 at 3:56 PM.
