From Hogwarts to Hawkins: The Rise and Fall of Bonnie Wright and Stranger Things Star Jamie Campbell Bower’s Engagement
Harry Potter collided with Stranger Things off-screen when Bonnie Wright and Jamie Campbell Bower fell for each other on the Deathly Hallows set in 2010 — a whirlwind that led to a brief engagement and a fairytale that didn’t last.
Remember when two worlds almost crossed over in the most fandom-y way possible? For a hot second, Ginny Weasley and the future Stranger Things big bad were engaged. It didn’t last, but both of them landed on their feet — and Bonnie Wright has been refreshingly honest about how playing Ginny wasn’t exactly the dream gig fans assumed.
The Harry Potter set romance that fizzled fast
Bonnie Wright and Jamie Campbell Bower met in 2010 while shooting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. He was playing young Gellert Grindelwald; she was already deep into the Ginny Weasley run. By April 2011, the two were reportedly engaged. Then the spell broke: they split in June 2012. Short, headline-grabbing, and very much over.
Where they are now
- Bonnie Wright got married on March 19, 2022, to Andrew Lococo, a senior buyer at the footwear and sports apparel company Soccerloco. They met through a mutual friend named Georgia, who introduced them after connecting with Bonnie at Waste Watch, a sustainability meet-up in Los Angeles. Translation: not a Hollywood meet-cute — a real one.
- Jamie Campbell Bower has had a few high-profile relationships (yes, the on-and-off run with Lily Collins, plus the engagement to Wright). Lately, he’s been linked to YouTuber Elena Taber, with dating rumors kicking up in April 2025. Fans have been tracking that pairing ever since.
Bonnie Wright on Ginny getting sidelined in the films
In 2023, Wright went on Michael Rosenbaum’s 'Inside of You' podcast and talked about something a lot of fans have felt for years: the movies gave Ginny way less runway than the books. She said the pressure to deliver on a beloved character was real, but the material just wasn’t there most of the time.
'I definitely feel there was anxiety toward performing and doing the best thing as my character built.'
She said she often worried fans would think she hadn’t done the character justice, when in reality so many of Ginny’s beats simply didn’t make it into the final cuts. Early on, she didn’t even have dialogue. Her first line — a quick 'good luck' — was handed to her on the day by director Chris Columbus. Before that, at auditions, she read Hermione’s lines because they didn’t have Ginny scenes for her to use. That’s how thin the material was.
And as the films got bigger, there wasn’t much room to tweak. Scripts were locked down by layers of studio oversight, and there was no real path to expand Ginny’s presence. Wright admitted she carried that around for a while, second-guessing herself. The upside: fans still love the version of Ginny we did get, even if the movies never let her be the full chaos-brilliant Weasley from the page.
Where to watch
All Harry Potter movies are currently streaming on HBO Max. Stranger Things is on Netflix.
Thoughts on how the films handled Ginny? Drop them in the comments — I’m curious where you land on this one.