- Kari Lewis, a 31-year-old woman from Indiana, has the internet doing a double-take thanks to her amazing Emma Watson cosplays.
- The woman is a dead ringer for the 3o-year-old actress, and earns money impersonating Watson's most famous characters at conventions and children's parties.
- Lewis spoke to MarieClaire.com about having a famous face, earning money to cosplay, and which of Emma Watson's famous characters she plans to impersonate next.
There are celebrity doppelgängers and then there are people who look so much like certain celebs, you have to do an actual double-take when you see them.
The internet is currently doing a collective double-take thanks to Kari Lewis, a 31-year-old woman from Indianapolis, Indiana who just so happens to be the spitting image of 30-year-old actress Emma Watson. Lewis has been compared to Watson for years now—since the first Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was released in 2001, in fact.
"I was approached by a couple of young girls at a post office and they called me Hermione," she tells MarieClaire.com of her first time being mistaken for her celebrity doppelgänger. "I didn't recognize the name, so I went home and looked it up. It was around the time the first Harry Potter film was released."
Lewis' day job is as an instructional assistant, but the self-described "cosplayer, blogger, and Hufflepuff" (per her Instagram bio) has put her famous-looking face to work too and earns extra money on the side dressing up as some of Watson's most famous characters, Hermione Granger and Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
"I started in 2017 when I attended Indiana Comic Con, and I received a lot of positive feedback on my Hermione cosplay," Lewis says of her origins as a professional Emma Watson (or at least Emma Watson character) impersonator. "A lot of people turned their heads and commented on how much I looked like Emma."
Lewis says the side hustle is perfect for her and actually felt inevitable in a lot of ways because she's always sought out ways to perform and dress up (her résumé also includes a stint performing as a circus clown, time as a "haunted attraction actor," and roles in school plays). When it comes to professional appearances, Lewis mostly works the convention circuit (she declined to specify exactly what it pays to look just like Emma Watson, but did say that convention organizers typically pay for her travel and hotel expenses and that she sells autographed cosplay prints at the events), but has also branched out to birthday parties, which is just adorable.
"A little girl said to me, 'I've never met a real life princess before!' and I wanted to cry," Lewis said of her first birthday party appearance as Watson's Belle from the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast. "So, I told her she's a princess too!"
The most impressive thing about Lewis' Emma Watson cosplay career (other than her on-point eyebrows and, you know, nearly-identical face), though, is probably her commitment to covering the breadth of the actress' body of work. Meaning? Lewis doesn't just dress as Watson's most iconic, commonly-cosplayed characters like Hermione Granger and Belle. She's also done an impressive version of Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower (and told us she's actually working on two additional looks from the movie—the dress Watson's character wears for the "Living Room Routine" dance and the character's Rocky Horror look).
She's also currently in the process of sewing (talk about dedication) Meg March's pink ballgown from Little Women to add that character to her repertoire, too.
Of course, she also does those more classic cosplay characters—and does them perfectly, FWIW. Her go-to Beauty and the Beast costume is Belle's casual, small provincial town look:
But she also does a '20s-inspired take on the character sometimes:
Her favorite character to play, however, is Hermione, and it shows; she has a range of the character's looks in her wardrobe. There's classic, ready-for-class Hermione:
There's the more casual, hanging-in-the-common-room Hermione look:
And, of course, Yule Ball Hermione, for when you're feeling fancy and/or festive:
To see more of Lewis' impressive Emma Watson cosplays (and general doppelgänger-ness), follow her on Instagram and TikTok.
