On Tuesday, actress Emma Watson had a brief run in with the police in Warwickshire after her illegally parked car got towed. The Harry Potter star was apparently having a drink with her mother Jacqueline and friends at a Stratford-upon-Avon pub while her blue Audi was blocking in the manager of Red Hot Mamma pizzeria across the street. According to The Sun, Watson needed a pay-and-display ticket for the area and that there was “no parking” sign hung where she stopped, just outside a car park.
Watson has not tweeted since May of last year, and has rarely posted on social media the last few years. Though it was undoubtedly a stressful situation at the time, by Friday Watson was joking about the event on social media.
“Still searching for parking in Stratford upon Avon,” she wrote. “Merchant of Venice v good if you can still get tickets.”
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She then tagged the Royal Shakespeare Company, who put on the show she was seeing in the area when the incident took place.
The pizzeria manager described the alleged altercation to MailOnline, saying, “Three and a half hours of searching for the driver was the last thing I needed after working a 12-hour shift. The car had parked in front of our gate which is a no-parking zone.”
He added, “But when the police started to tow her car away, she came flying out of the pub shouting, ‘That's my car, that's my car.’”
Another witness said, “Emma was pretty upset that her car was being towed away, she came running over shouting, ‘hey, that's my car,’ and was arguing with the truck driver, but he was having none of it. He told her the car was being impounded, signed some paperwork to give her and hauled the car away…Emma was with her mum who watched the whole thing in the street.”
The Warwickshire Police confirmed the story, saying, “A report of a blue Audi S3 parked across a driveway and blocking in two cars on High Street near the junction with Sheep Street in Stratford. The report was made at 9.42pm and the car was impounded and taken away at 10.21pm. No crime was recorded.”
Watson was reportedly charged £192 to recover her car, and £26 more for every day it remained on the impound lot.
