Emma Watson's Post-Harry Potter Cult Crime Movie Is Streaming On Netflix

If you're only familiar with Emma Watson's work as Hermione Granger in the "Harry Potter" franchise, you're missing out on one of her best post-"Potter" roles — specifically, one in a Sofia Coppola movie that's making waves on Netflix right now.

Released in 2013, Coppola's fifth feature film, "The Bling Ring," stars Watson, Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, Leslie Mann, Taissa Farmiga, Gavin Rossdale, and even Paris Hilton and Kirsten Dunst as themselves. It focuses on a real ring of teens who started quietly robbing celebrity homes in Hollywood. All of the characters in the film are pretty lightly fictionalized versions of the real figures, and if you want to learn more about those figures, you can watch Netflix's 2022 docuseries "The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist" or HBO's 2023 documentary film "The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring," which hones in on the supposed titular ringleader, Rachel Lee. 

If you'd prefer to stay in the fictional version of this world, though, "The Bling Ring" is a deeply underrated entry in Coppola's extensive filmography, and it's a funny, dark, incisive look at our obsession with celebrity culture and these extremely real teenagers who took that obsession way, way too far. So is "The Bling Ring" worth watching?

Honestly, yes. This is an underrated Coppola movie largely because it strays from her cinematic comfort zone (quieter character studies, by and large) in the same way that her Dunst-led "biopic" "Marie Antoinette" did, telling a loud and bombastic story with the help of an absolutely killer soundtrack. Plus, for my money? It's Watson's best performance besides Hermione Granger.

"The Bling Ring" technically puts its immediate focus on Israel Broussard's Marc Hall, a teenaged boy who ends up transferring to a California high school where he meets and forms an intense bond with Rebecca Ahn (Katie Chang). (Rebecca, by the by, is the counterpart of the aforementioned "ringleader" Rachel Lee.) Rebecca, as it turns out, loves celebrities and petty larceny above everything else, and she brings Marc along for the ride.

So how does Emma Watson come into play? After pulling off their biggest robbery yet, Marc and Rebecca link up with Nicolette "Nicki" Moore (Watson), her sister Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and their friend Chloe Tainer (Claire Julien). (For context, Nicki is modeled on Alexis Neiers.) When Marc and Rebecca successfully rob Paris Hilton and show off their goods to Nicki, Sam, and Chloe, the trio is intrigued ... and they ask to be taken back to Hilton's house to hit it again. From that point on, the group starts robbing high-profile celebrities, including Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan (among others).

I'm sure you can guess that they eventually get caught, and honestly, the best part of "The Bling Ring" is the titular ring's attempts to salvage their public images. (A certain subset of Internet-addicted millennials, myself included, are intimately familiar with the real Alexis Neiers' frantic call to Nancy Jo Sales where she tries to deny wearing expensive, red-soled Christian Louboutin stilettos to court.) Watson's wry, deadpan Valley Girl accent and hilariously craven "conversion" to religion at the end of the movie — along with her assertion that she could become President — completely sells the story, and honestly? It's a truly phenomenal performance. So why isn't Watson gracing the screen these days?

After "The Bling Ring," Emma Watson appeared in films like "This is the End" and the live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast" (and she almost played the lead role in "La La Land" that ultimately went to Emma Stone). As of this writing, Watson's last on-screen role came in 2019 in Greta Gerwig's absolutely stunning adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," where Watson plays the sweet and maternal Meg March alongside Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, and Laura Dern as her sisters Jo, Amy, and Beth and their mother Marmee. (Hilariously, Watson replaced Stone.)

Watson has largely moved away from acting; she and her brother now run Renais Gin, which recycles skin grapes from their father's vineyard, Domaine Watson. Will she return to performing? "In some ways I really won the lottery [with acting], and what happened to me is so unusual," Watson told Hollywood Authentic. She continued:

"But a bigger component than the actual job itself is the promotion and selling of that piece of work, this piece of art. The balance of that can get quite thrown off. I think I'll be honest and straightforward, and say: I do not miss selling things. I found that to be quite soul-destroying."

Still, Watson hinted at a potential new project — saying she's "working on something that [she's] never done before" — and said she misses acting in her own way. "But I do very much miss using my skill set, and I very much miss the art. I just found I got to do so little of the bit that I actually enjoyed." Hopefully Watson returns to acting, but for now, "The Bling Ring" is on Netflix.