INT: Harry Potter

With HARRY
POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX opening this week, you
can expect big numbers at the box office, even with this crowded
summer of sequels and such. With
the fifth chapter, I think fans will find a whole bunch to get
excited about. The special
effects look amazing and we are getting closer and closer to
whatever Harry and companies future will be with book seven hitting
the stores soon. The
successful film franchise not only has the very popular books as a
base for their success, but also, the three young actors who brought
them to life. Daniel
Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint grew up
right before our eye’s and gave a face to Harry and friends.
While they are starting to branch out, most notably Daniel
and his on stage nakedness in the production of EQUUS, they still
give their all to the franchise.

When the three of
them took time out to talk to the press at the Four Seasons in
Beverly Hills, I was truly surprised.
First off, Emma is absolutely lovely and has a terrific
chemistry with Daniel and Rupert. It
seems that they really are good friends.
And they are just young adults who happen to be in one of the
most successful film franchises ever made.
Yet there was not an ounce of conceit, nor pretension.
They seemed like real people that made fun of each other and
didn’t take themselves too seriously.
Daniel had no problems talking about his recent case of
nudity, while Emma was positive that she saw a giraffe somewhere.
Rupert was the most quiet of the three, yet he was very funny
when he wanted to be. Yes, the
books are terribly popular, but having this winning group of actors
bringing the characters to life certainly adds to the films success.
And yes, the latest HARRY POTTER is now playing at a theatre
near you.

Daniel, how does
being naked on stage in “Equus” compare to the kiss in Harry
Potter?

Daniel Radcliffe
(DR): Well, I did the kiss first and I think the reason that it
wasn’t a problem, or a sort of worry in the slightest, was that in
the back of my mind I was thinking I’ll be naked on stage in six
months [and] I’ve got to get over this because if that’s a worry,
then the whole ‘nude blinding horses’ would be a greater worry.
But really, everyone assumed that the kiss was more of a big deal
than perhaps it was, a really big sort of moment, but it’s just like
doing any other scene really, which is very disappointing for people
to hear I know, but that’s unfortunately how it was.

Did you relate
to the issue of revolution in this film, being a punk rock fan?

DR: Yeah, I love
doing all that stuff to do with Harry in this film because
[director] David [Yates] kept referring to Dumbledore’s army as
being like the French resistance, which was a metaphor that really
appealed to me. And also, Harry as a leader and a teacher was able
to show off his wizarding skills. That showing off stuff was really,
really fun to do. So I don’t think I brought a tremendous amount of
punk music into those scenes. It didn’t seem to require it. I was
mainly listening to Radiohead for Harry in this film. Somebody did
ask me yesterday if there was one album that could be Harry’s
soundtrack during this movie. I think it would be “Okay
Computer” by Radiohead which I think tells you all you need to
know about his character.

Could all three
of you talk about growing up over the course of these five films?

Emma Watson (EW):
It’s kind of a bit of an Emma Watson context when you’re doing it
on screen. Like I remember, especially with the earlier films, Dan
and Rupert had grown a couple of inches by the end of shooting
because it was so long, or by the time the film was released. That
was kind of crazy. I remember on the second one I was still losing
teeth, so that was interesting. One scene I had kind of like a full
set and then I had to cover all of that up.

DR: Not a full
false set of teeth. It was one tooth. It wasn’t like the whole
mouth.

EW: No, I was
saying I had a full set of teeth and then I’d lose one.

DR: [teasing her]
Oh, right, okay, I thought you said, “I had a false set of
teeth.” [Laughing]

EW: False?! No!
[Laughing] Oh my God, no! No, I don’t wear false teeth. [Laughing]

DR: Sorry!

EW: So it was kind
of a weird experience, to make the whole growing up process run
smoothly. We kind of had to do it without anyone realizing. But I
don’t know, I think we don’t really think about it. Everyone always
asks this question. “Is it really hard growing up on
screen?” I’ve never grown up any other way so I don’t know.
That’s the way it’s always been and you just kind of deal with that,
I guess. And we’ve been doing it since we were so young so I can’t
really remember what life was like before these films [Laughing] –
so I don’t know. It’s just the way it is.

Rupert Grint (RG):
Yeah, for me it’s just been one long experience really because it
doesn’t really feel like that long ago. It’s only when you look back
on the first ones you sort of realize how much we’ve grown up I
guess. It’s been really fun. I’ve enjoyed sort of every moment of it
so it’s been really cool.

DR: I don’t think
you realize when you’re growing up. I think it’s just one of those
things that sort of just happens to you and somebody shows you a
photograph of yourself when you were 10 and you recoil in horror. To
us, as Emma was saying, we’ve just grown up. We don’t think of
ourselves as having grown up on screen. But yeah, it’s been great.
It’s been really good fun. We’ve met some of the people who we’re
really, really good friends with through these films who we probably
wouldn’t have had the chance to meet had we not done them, so it’s
been fantastic.

How will it feel
to have your handprints and footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater?

EW: I was amazed
they asked us. I was like, “Wow.” I couldn’t believe it.
That’s such a big deal. I was really, really, really flattered. It’s
just amazing to be doing it.

DR: Yeah, but when
you see those other names, I think we all were like …

EW: Really? Us? You
sure?

DR: Yeah, I don’t
know. It’s amazing. It’s absolutely just fantastic. I think we’re
all just a little bit in shock that we’ve been asked. It’s amazing.

EW: Yeah, it’s
really cool.

Did you do
“Equus” to prove to yourself as well as audiences that you’re
more than Harry Potter? Do you look ahead to life after Potter in
terms of your career?

DR: I do give it a
lot of thought. That question was asked to me in a rather more
brutal way the other day. I think what they meant to say was,
“Is there life for you after Harry Potter?” But what they
said was, “Will you live after Harry Potter?” on the red
carpet which was slightly… I don’t know what they’re planning for
me after the seventh film. [Laughing] But yeah, Potter’s never
something I would want to distance myself from because I’m
incredibly proud of it. It’s given me the most amazing opportunities
and I’ve met some of the most fantastic people and got to work with
these brilliant actors.

But I certainly
also want to establish myself as an actor in my own right rather
than being just the actor who plays Harry Potter. And as you say,
it’s just as much if not more to prove to myself that I can do it
than to be able to prove it to the audience. Because there will
always be people who see us as our respective characters no matter
what we do. But ultimately that’s more their problem than ours
because they are not the people who are going to be stopping us from
doing other different things.

Over the years
all three of you have talked about fan encounters, but I’m not
sure how many opportunities you’ve had to work with a fan. Evanna Lynch was such a lover of the books
and she came out on the open call and then got the part. Did you get
sense of her reaction to being on the Hogwarts set and being a part
of it?

EW: It’s really
funny. I guess like the fifth time around, Dan, Rupert and I were
just kind of [feeling that] it’s quite a surreal experience working
at Leavesden Studios. You’ll be going along on your [your golf buggy
because] the studio’s so big we have little golf buggies. Anyway,
we’re going along on our golf buggies and they’ll just be like –
we’ve had like a giraffe, we’ve had- – no – what was that?

DR: A giraffe? We
did? [Laughing]

EW: No, not a
giraffe. I’m really crazy. No, no, no. Maybe not giraffes but
we’ve had like goats, we’ve had bats.

DR: We have had
goats and bats.

RG: Armadillos.

EW: Armadillos,
that’s why you’ll be going past and it’s like, “Oh, yeah,
yeah.” And we’re sort of past the stage of really- – I don’t
know. It doesn’t really affect us. Like a giraffe could go by and I
wouldn’t care.

DR: That almost
happened. We’ve obviously been so adjusted to it we’ve not even
noticed.

EW: So anyway, the
point is that when you step onto these amazing sets, we kind of take
it for granted at this point. And when you see Evanna
Lynch’s face every time she steps on set, it kind of
humbles you again and it makes you realize just how amazing the
whole experience is. It stops you from getting …

DR: Blasé.

EW: And taking it
for granted. It was really nice to have someone who’s so genuinely,
genuinely just completely excited and just in ecstasy every time she
saw something. It was really nice.

DR: We did have one
moment though where it was very, very hard to present an idea to
David Yates if Evanna was standing next to you because if you said
something and it was even slightly wrong from the technicality of
the book, she would not…

EW: She would be
looking at you like [scowling].

DR: And you would
be in deep trouble. So you’d sort of have to be quite careful.
Whenever I talked about the wording of the prophecy and she was
there, I’d just be like, “Where’s the book?” [laughs] But
no, it was fantastic to have Evanna around because she is such a
massive fan of the books and the films so it was lovely to have that
enthusiasm.

EW: I remember
actually after watching the film, the person I was most nervous
about finding out their opinion was Evanna. I’d go up to Evanna
just like, “What did you think?” I was really, really
scared. But she loved it so I was like, “Okay, as long as she
likes it, we’re good. We’re all good. That’s good.”

Daniel, you play
such a dark role in this. What place did you go to develop such a
dark characterization? Did David Yates share his ideas with you
about this role?

DR: I mean, I don’t
know, I think everybody’s got that side of them which they can upon
when they have to if they’re trying to act it. So yeah, David was
fantastic. I think the two people in this film that were most
brilliant were obviously David Yates. He was just incredible
throughout the film and what was remarkable about David was that he
had the same enthusiasm on the last day of filming as he did on the
first which on a 10 month shoot is quite an achievement. So working
with David was fantastic and I can’t think of some specific notes
that he gave me in terms of Harry’s darkness.

I just remember him
coming up with very, very real, accurate direction the whole time.
For instance, there was one scene very early on in the film when
Harry’s asleep and he’s having nightmares and then he wakes up
suddenly. I was doing a lot of that sort of movie type of Ah! waking
up. And David just says, “Dan, no one does that. Just open your
eyes.” [Laughing] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You do see it
in films a lot of the time when people are lying straight down in
bed and they suddenly sit bolt upright. If you try and do that, it’s
incredibly difficult to do, let alone when you’re half asleep. But
yeah, so working with David and also working with Gary Oldman in terms of the scenes
concerning his death in the film, sorry if I spoiled that for
anybody. You’ve all read it.

But in terms of
those scenes, he was just a fantastic person to be around. There was
the one bizarre bit when we were filming literally the moment of his
death and my immediate reaction to it where he said, “Dan, in
this next one, do you mind if I do something a little more
physical?” And I was thinking, “Maybe he’s going to give
me a hug” or something like that. And he grabbed me and shook
me violently for 30 seconds while screaming at me. And then he sort
of backed away slowly and you suddenly regress and I just started to
cry. It was this really weird thing but he obviously knew it would
work. [Laughing] I don’t know if he’s done it to people in the past
but certainly it worked then. He was amazing. That was a very, very
long answer. I’m sorry.

Do you have an
inside track to reading the Harry Potter book that’s coming out
shortly, and how do the book releases affect you guys personally?

RG: Yeah, it’s
quite exciting, particularly this one because there’s so much hype
about it and everyone’s got their own little theory of who’s going
to die. That’s the big question. I don’t know really. I’m really
looking forward to it.

DR: Who do you
think’s going to die?

RG: I think it
could be you actually. [Laughing]

DR: Oh, man. I
mean, I do think absolutely there’s always going to be that hype
around it but the thing is, with the books and the films, it’s not
just hype. It’s deserved because they do get better and better and
more exciting. My favorite book is the fifth and my favorite film is
the fifth as well. To be able to say that five movies into a
franchise is I suppose quite rare. But also, I don’t know how the
book releases affect us. I think you’re very, very anxious about
what’s going to happen. I don’t think we get totally distressed by
it, do we really?

RG: No.

DR: No.

EW: I get a bit
distressed.

DR: Do you?

EW: I get really
stressed. I remember us doing this interview and I’ve always just
been convinced that Hermione’s going to make it. Apparently this
hacker has been claiming that she’s going to die. This interviewer
sat down and she was like, “Well, this hacker is claiming
what’s going to happen and she’s not going to make it and she’s the
one.” I was just like, “No, no, no. You don’t understand.
She’s meant to be with Ron and she’s meant to just…” I just
have all these ideas in my head about what was going to happen. It
was all just ruined. It was horrible. But I guess from an acting
point of [view] it would be good to have a death scene or to die. It
would be a challenge, I guess. I mean, we obviously have hugely
invested interests but I think mostly we’re like really big fans
ourselves.

DR: Yeah, exactly,
so we are looking forward to finding out with the rest of the world
as well, but we certainly don’t get any inside information.

EW: Yeah, no sort.

DR: No, we don’t.
When I saw Jo at the premiere the other day, I just said, “How
many people worldwide have read the book?” And considering that
at this point it’s under two weeks before its release and under 10
people have read it still which is pretty incredible. But could you
imagine being one of those people? How fantastic would that be? My
God!

Was it fun
getting to kick butt for a change and do some magic?

EW: Yeah,
definitely. Ron and Hermione kind of took a bit of a backseat on the
last one, watching Harry do all the tasks and stuff so it felt
really nice to kind of be back in the action again. I mean, nothing
major. We had a couple of stunts to do, a couple of harnesses and
that sort of thing which was really fun. We actually had a dance
choreographer in. All the different spells had different
choreographed specific movements that went with them. So we had a
couple of classes like that which was really good fun. I think this
is the first one that you really see the craft behind magic and you
get to see the craftsmanship. It looked really impressive I think,
especially that scene at the end between Dumbledore and Voldemort.

Was it fun for
you guys too?

Rupert and Daniel:
Yeah.

Was there
anything hard about it?

DR: I found the
dance lessons quite tricky actually. I found I was getting really
frustrated with myself when I couldn’t get the moves right. But
yeah, no, it was. It was good. I think that was a brilliant idea
that David had to actually make it so that whereas before, it’s just
been point at something, say the word. Now he was starting to build
the sort of art just to show a distinction because when it came to
the film, we didn’t really do a lot of the stuff that we learned in
the [class] but all the adults were. And it just made it so that
there was actually a distinction between the adults and the young
kids in terms of the skill. But no, it was good. It was fun. One of
my favorite lines in the film is when Gary says, “Get away from
my godson” and then punches Jason Isaacs in the head. Me and Gary, we
were Butch and Sundance on that day. It was just fantastic. So no, I
had a lot of fun, definitely.

RG: Similar to
everyone really. In the last one, Ron’s been a bit of a wimp and
sort of stayed away from the action side. This time it was quite
cool that he got to be a bit tougher and got to fight so it was good
fun really.

Of all the
actors who have left their handprints and footprints in cement at
Grauman’s Chinese theater, is there one in particular you really
admire? Also, do you like Los Angeles? What do you like best about
L.A.? Did you enjoy the premiere yesterday?

DR: You asked four
questions in one breath! It’s incredible! I think John Wayne’s there
so that’s pretty cool. My favorite John Wayne line is from a really
early John Wayne movie and it was obviously improvised because
nobody could have scripted this. As he walks out, he walks out of a
saloon I suppose, because they were saloons then, not bars. And he
walks out and he’s walking through the square and he’s quite young,
and there’s all these birds in the square and he walks in and they
all flutter away and he goes, “Get outta my way, pigeon.”
Which is just fantastic. So if I can have my handprints next to that
man then that would be awesome.

RG: LA is really
cool, yeah. It’s been really fun. It’s just really different to
everywhere else. I really enjoy it. It’s been really, really good,
hasn’t it?

EW: Yeah, it’s
really funny. There’s lots of things, like when I came the second
time to LA, there were so many things I didn’t know about it.
Apparently my dad went to like the tar pits yesterday which I was
just like that was so weird.

DR: What’s he doing
at a tar pit?

EW: It’s this
massive tar pit which basically loads of animals basically fell
into.

DR: Oh God, that’s
horrendous! [Laughing]

EW: Yeah, it’s nice
that he actually had a day yesterday when I was able to actually see
LA which is really cool.

DR: That’s deeply
disturbing.

EW: It’s not. It’s
really cool. It’s like history. You can see it.

DR: I was about to
say that LA’s very clean.

EW: Let me finish
my answer.

DR: [Laughing]
I’m sorry.

EW: So it’s been
really nice and the reception we had yesterday was amazing. I’ve had
a really good time here and everyone’s been really friendly. It’s
been really fun. It’s been really, really good.

DR: It is a strange
town I think. It’s totally different from I think anything we’ve
really experienced before and I don’t know, it’s very spread out and
I don’t know, it’s just hard to get my head around fully really.
It’s just like nothing I’ve ever- – nowhere I’ve ever been really.

EW: It’s very
distinctive.

DR: Yes.

RG: Yeah.

EW: You know you’re
in LA.

DR: Yes, certainly.

EW: The weather’s
nice.

DR: That is.

EW: We’re all
enjoying that.

DR: Yeah, yeah,
absolutely. That’s the first thing you notice because it’s warm
especially coming from England where they’ve had storms and things
recently.

Have you gotten
to see it in 3D Imax yet? How do you think it will be?

DR: I haven’t seen
it that way. I have heard about it. It’s going to be fantastic. It’s
going to be terrifying.

EW: I was about to
say, it’s scary enough as it is. In 3D, people will be like…

DR: Also, there’s
one moment where Ralph as Voldemort sort of appears and he comes
from the side of the screen, sort of pushes forward and suddenly
appears. That’s gonna scar people. That’s going to be hysterical.
No, it’s great. I’ve not seen it though, no.

EW: People will
jump. Honestly, people will be absolutely jumping out of their
seats. There’s enough moments as it is where…

DR: Would they have
the glasses?

EW: Yeah. That’s
what 3D is.

DR: I know, but I
don’t know, maybe they give you a visor or something. [Laughing] Or
like the guy in Star Trek who had the thing.

Let me know what
you think. Send
questions and comments to [email protected].