[Version française]
Melissa from The Leaky Cauldron visited the set and shared her report in 6 parts. Emma was only mentioned in the parts 1 and 6. The others are there:
Part 2: The clocktower, the hospital wing, the details
Part 2: The clocktower, the hospital wing, the details
Part 3: Shrieking
Part 4: Flights and French Men
Part 5: Candy
Before visiting Leavesden, it’s easy to dismiss the notion that the Harry Potter kids lead normal lives. These are not “normal” kids in the “normal” sense of the word: they go to tutoring instead of school, makeup instead of detention, film premieres instead of school dances. In a bag of fan mail alone is enough adoration to cure any pubescent “no one loves me” ills.
The place where Harry Potter is made, it turns out, is more like an impressive film day camp than the incubator for some of the costliest and highest-grossing films ever. Its location gives it a quiet quality that is all but associated with the film industry.
In one of the largest parts of the studio, what was once the Chamber of Secrets set, is Hagrid’s Hut. The day we visited, the crew was filming a third-act scene, in which Ron and Hermione make up from a fight at Hagrid’s insistence, and the downhill events of Prisoner of Azkaban’s final portion begin to pick up speed. The gigantic round hut is raised, and surrounded by a small crop of people — mostly crew and chaperones. Behind it is a small gaggle of high-school-aged kids who warrant a double-take — they’re the principals’ stand-ins, hanging out just in case.
Sticking out of the hut is a small cage, in which there are two things of interest: a group of bats fluttering innocently between the cage and the hut, and a small Mexican man hunched over a small television screen. The scene is simple and short: Hagrid urges Ron and Hermione to hug, Scabbers is found, a group of Ministry officials are seen heading toward the hut, and the Trio is shooed out of the premises by a concerned Hagrid. After a morning rehearsing the takes finally start rolling, and after a few Alfonso Cuaron makes an executive decision.
The director leans on the fenced side of his little coop and talks calmly to an assistant director. “We’re going to try it without the hug,” he says. “We might not have enough of Ron and Hermione’s fight to make it work.” He pouts slightly. “No sex in this movie.”
Alfonso Cuaron can’t seem to make a comment about Prisoner of Azkaban without using the word “sex,” but to hear him say it is to understand what’s so innocuous abut the word from his mouth. He uses it as a quirky little joke, a synonym for puberty and teen drama and hormones and all the little escalations in maturity that make Prisoner of Azkaban the coming-of-age novel it is.
So when he utters the word on set, there’s not a single reaction other than a quiet shifting of papers, a tweak in lines, and a re-do of the scene without the aforementioned hug.
That quiet and steady attitude prevails around Leavesden. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint repeat that scene for as long as child labor laws allow, and are then turned into the hands of the many chaperones. One loudly orders that they take a break; another lets them pal around at the side of the set.
Watching the kids on set makes their normalcy crystal clear. This middle-of-nowhere location is a spot where hours of arduous and repetitive filmmaking happens each day. It’s not a glamorous Hollywood backlot, it’s a dressed-up garage where they do a lot of work, and the grounds are as familiar to the three main actors as a school hallway is to “normal” teens.
After a day of touring for us and a day of working for them, the three teen actors from Harry Potter took time to chat with us about Prisoner of Azkaban, Alfonso Cuaron, school, films, music, the books, and much, much more.
In costume, on their own turf, miles from media blitzes and months from premieres, it resulted in one of the most relaxed and laugh-ridden interviews I’ve ever participated in, or seen the kids give.
Q: Can you tell us about the dementors and what they’re like in this movie and how it is acting against what will later be an effect?
DR: We don’t know what they’re really going to look like.
Emma Watson: We’ve seen some images, basic.
DR: I’ve seen some very sort of rough storyboard things but we haven’t seen any. Alfonso described them to us very very vividly and they ain’t gonna look pretty. They’re going to be really horrific. I think they’re the scariest things in all the Harry Potter books.
Q: How has it been to work with Alfonso Cuaron?
EW: Especially for me, as someone who hasn’t acted in anything else before, it was great working with a new director and doing something different, seeing different techniques, different ideas. It’s also been really good fun, it’s been great.
Q: What kind of different ideas, can you give an example or two?
EW: I think there’s definitely a difference in style just like looking at the two, I mean I’ve only seen a few clips of this third one that’s coming out but Alfonso’s done some amazing things with camera angles and camera shots and this one’s much more flowy and it’s got — you can just tell the difference. Especially with the director, a lot of himself goes into what he’s doing and you can definitely tell the difference.
Q: We heard that he’s bringing out the teenagers in you.
RG: Yeah
EW: Yeah
DR: Oh yes.
RG: He’s a bit different, but it was really sad to see Chris go. But yeah, he’s really good, he’s really fun and we get on really well.
DR: The only clips I’ve actually seen —
EW: Dan’s being very professional and not watching it.
DR: It’s not anything to do with professionalism, I just hate watching myself. [Laughter.] I haven’t seen any kind of difference in styles because I haven’t seen any footage yet so officially I can’t comment but Chris always had this fantastically energetic approach to doing the scenes, which suited the first two films absolutely perfectly and he made two absolutely fantastic films. With the third one, Alfonso has a much more kind of laid back, emotional, intense way of directing.
EW: He wants a lot of our input in the characters. A lot more he kind of said, "Well how would you do it, what would you do it like? No, I’m not going to tell you how to do it, it has to come from what you think and from your own experiences."
Q: Have you seen any of Alfonso’s previous films?
DR: Yeah.
EW: Yeah. A Little Princess. I loved that, I cried in that. Well, I cry in everything, but, it was great. It was really, oh, I loved that film.
DR: I’ve seen A Little Princess, I’ve seen Y Tu Mama Tambien [loud rounds of nervous laughter]. Basically if you’re going to work with any director, I think it’s kind of important to know what kind of stuff they’ve done before. I’m working my way through all Mike Newell’s films at the moment. I just watched Donnie Brasco a couple of days ago.
Q: What would you say was the most interesting sequence for you to shoot or the most challenging?
RG: There’s been a lot of good scenes. The one I like is where I did my dragging thing, that was really good, a dog dragging me into the tree. It’s when the dog drags me into the tree and I had to have this harness on my leg and was dragged across the ground, it was really fun. That was quite difficult I suppose, because I swallowed a lot of grass.
DR: And you had to watch out for the camera as well.
RG: Oh, yeah.
EW: He crashed into the camera quite a lot of times.
RG: I kicked the lens of the camera off.
DR: The important thing to point out, didn’t injure the cameraman!
DR: For me the most interesting scene is probably the Shrieking Shack you know, I’m in the scene with Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and David Thewlis all at the same time, it’s like, “Oh my god, fantastic!” You know you’re surrounded by absolutely some of the most amazing actors, so that’s probably the most interesting. Most challenging it could have been the same one, it could have been actually the same scene because it is, you do, obviously you’re putting in effort all the time, but particularly when youre with Gary Oldman and David Thewlis and Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, you’re going to really, really go for it. So also all the stuff that went on with having my soul sucked out, that’s also slightly harder.
EW: For me like Dan I found the Shrieking Shack was very challenging. It took quite a long time. We were in there for —
DR: What, a month?
EW: More than that maybe. It’s such a complex scene, and a lot is happening in it, and so a lot of it kept changing and that was hard and its’ all quite emotional really. Well not emotional, but —
DR: You feel drained after —
EW: Yeah you do feel drained.
DR: Another thing was that the walls actually leaned and creaked, so we couldn’t actually hear what each other was saying.
EW: So we had to do it like doubly loud.
TLC: Last year I asked you guys to predict what would happen to your characters. Now that you read the fifth book, can you update me?
DR: Oh - I’m sticking with mine. Mmhm.
EW: What was the prediction?
DR: Oh you two are definitely, you’re madly in love. Over to you two!
[Laughter. A blushing Emma and Rupert seem to be slightly flustered, so someone asks a new question.]
Q: Have you guys done the scene with the boggart yet, and what was that like?
EW: We didn’t actually get to do it? Did we?
DR: You did, you had the spider.
RG: Oh yeah.
DR: But nothing was there.
RG: There was a picture of a spider.
Q: You get to wear a lot of your clothes in the last half of this movie. Does that help you feel more like yourself?
DR: Obviously in the first two films the story dictated that we were just in uniform a lot of the time, because a lot of the story takes place during the school year, where as in this one a lot of it takes place during the holidays. So I think it makes it slightly more relaxed I supposed.
EW: I definitely felt that.
RG: [Shaking head in disagreement] Ron’s clothes are very itchy jumpers.
EW: In uniform everyone looks the same and I think it’s good because it got all sort of different people’s personalities out.
Q: There are lots of new sets in this one. Do you get as excited as fans do about what’s going to go on the air?
DR: Absolutely.
EW: Yeah! Completely.
DR: It was actually, it got to the point — there were a lot of visitors to the set and they’d come on and I’d say, “What did you see?” and they’d say, “Oh, the Shrieking Shack, we saw that,” they’re just listing off things that I haven’t even seen!
Q: What are your favorite new sets in this one?
RG: This one [the courtyard] is really cool.
DR: And they’ve got a huge, did you see the pendulum? It’s fantastic. But it’s like, I think in one shot in the outtakes we’re just all swinging. But this one’s really cool, especially when it’s covered in snow in one of the scenes, amazing.
EW: I still walk around with my mouth open. The stuff that they do is just amazing. And there’s some great stuff. We did a bit of location for about a month in Scotland and the scenery was just breathtaking, it was amazing. Massive mountains and proper fresh air and it was really good.
Q: How did it feel to shoot in Scotland, away from the studio?
DR: It was rainy.
EW: Understatement of the century.
DR: And it’s not normal rain, it’s horizontal rain. Umbrellas are rendered useless. It’s, it is really good to get out of the studios for a while.
Q: You guys are obviously great friends. Do you have time when you’re not shooting between movies to hang out together?
DR: If you hung around with me for a year you wouldn’t want to spend that much more time with me. [Laughter from Emma Waston.] Don’t laugh!
EW: Sorry, sorry.
DR: We are with each other so much of the time, that we kind of need a break from each other by the end.
Q: A lot of the same crew has returned - do you guys have friendships among them?
DR: Oh yeah. It’s just like a huge family.
EW: Yeah like a huge harry potter family.
TLC: Emma are you wearing a time turner?
[Emma Watson laughs and blushes.]
DR: It’s a bit of fake one.
TLC: It’s a fake one?
EW: All right, are you ready for it? [Reveals the rest of the necklace.] It’s a fish weight. [Laughter.]
DR: There is a very good one.
EW: There is actually a very, very good one.
DR: Yeah it’s brilliantly detailed.
EW: I’ve broken about three of them so they gave me a fish weight instead.
Q: Rupert we saw a bit of you two filming [the scene where Ron and Hermione make up]. Can you tell us a bit about the dynamic between you two in this film, and does that scene resolve what’s been going on throughout the rest of the movie?
RG: We get to argue a lot in this one.
EW: Yeah, it’s good.
RG: Emma’s character’s got a cat.
EW: It’s all about the rat and the cat. It’s like Tom and Jerry all over again.
Q: Can you talk about working with those animals?
DR: A bat landed on my head. [Laughter.] It was actually very funny. I actually really love the animals, especially the lizards. The lizards are so cool. And the mice are fighting — the mice are fantastic. We’re taking bets on them. It’s between who’s gong to win or who’s going to escape first.
RG: Spiders I hate, but when we were in there with the bat I didn’t know I was scared of bats as well. [Laughter. Rupert makes a disgusted face.] Horrible!
Q: What about rats?
RG: There is a massive rat, absolutely huge.
Q: What other stuff is there?
Trio: Mice, lizards, bats, a six-legged tortoise.
Q: And do you two [Emma and Rupert] get to hug in this scene, are we going to see this? We saw a bit at the end of Chamber of Secrets — what’s going to happen, do we see anymore?
EW: No, [the hug] might be cut!
DR: We’re not sure, it was originally.
EW: It was. But we’re not sure.
Q: Is it because you two just refused to do it?
[Laughter.]
Warning: Possible Spoiler:
TLC: We saw on the storyboard, something about a rock…?
EW: The thing is, that when she it’s sort of complicated she turns back in time, so she’s watching herself in Hagrid’s Hut, and she throws the stone - to warn Hermione in Hagrid’s Hut, who recognizes the stone, that Dumbledore [getting flustered]
DR: [Putting out his hand as if to stop her from hurting herself] Emma, don’t
EW: It’s complicated
TLC: No, I got you.
DR: We were hoping at the beginning was, rather than the time turner, we were hoping — you know, new director, maybe a new spin on things, so instead of a time turner we were hoping for the car from Back to the Future. That’s what we were all really gunning for. The thing inside, the flux capacitator or something, I wanted one of those really badly.
Q: Did you guys bond with David Thewlis like [your characters] are supposed to bond?
[Enthusiastic assent from all three.]
DR: I spent a lot of time with him because basically the core emotional scenes in the film are with Lupin and Harry. Those are the main emotional scenes in the film so I spent a lot of time with him, and it was very interesting, actually, working with him.
Q: And they actually built a hippogriff, what was that like?
EW: It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
DR: It was fantastic. It’s, I’m not even going to try and explain. Here, it’s [stands up and moves back a few feet (away from the recorders)] I’ll shout um about here [points to spot where beak would be, which is a few inches above his head. ] So it’s pretty big.
Q: How did you get on with the cat playing Crookshanks?
[Instant groans from the boys.]
EW: Oh, I love my cat! They are so rude to my cat!
RG: It’s the ugliest cat.
DR: It looks like it’s been thrown against the wall at birth.
EW: Okay, so it’s got a flat nose.
DR: It doesn’t have a nose! It’s just 2D! It’s like the cartoon cat!
EW: It’s beautiful in its own ugly way.
DR: Notice the word UGLY.
[Laughter throughout.]
Q: What did Alfonso have you do to prepare for this film?
DR: We all wrote essays actually.
EW: Yes, we all wrote essays.
DR: And both me and Rupert were put to shame by Emma’s sixteen page essay! [Laughter.] No, no, it was fantastic! It really was fantastic…
RG: I don’t think I ever actually handed mine in…
[More laughter.]
DR: I wrote one on four sheets of paper, which I was so proud of, and then we see Emma’s written a three-volume novel! We were all slightly put to shame by that.
Q: What were the essays about?
DR: It was basically the state of our characters at the beginning, when we first meet them at the beginning of the third film.
TLC: Do you remember anything of what you said?
DR: I don’t remember, I have got a copy…
Q: Do you think that helped you, writing those things?
DR: Definitely. And every time there’s a huge scene I have it in the front of my script so every time there’s a big scene I try to read over it a couple of times.
EW: Just for the record, I have big handwriting.
[Laughter.]
DR: And mine is incredibly small! Mine would have been a huge book, but, it just wasn’t.
The place where Harry Potter is made, it turns out, is more like an impressive film day camp than the incubator for some of the costliest and highest-grossing films ever. Its location gives it a quiet quality that is all but associated with the film industry.
In one of the largest parts of the studio, what was once the Chamber of Secrets set, is Hagrid’s Hut. The day we visited, the crew was filming a third-act scene, in which Ron and Hermione make up from a fight at Hagrid’s insistence, and the downhill events of Prisoner of Azkaban’s final portion begin to pick up speed. The gigantic round hut is raised, and surrounded by a small crop of people — mostly crew and chaperones. Behind it is a small gaggle of high-school-aged kids who warrant a double-take — they’re the principals’ stand-ins, hanging out just in case.
Sticking out of the hut is a small cage, in which there are two things of interest: a group of bats fluttering innocently between the cage and the hut, and a small Mexican man hunched over a small television screen. The scene is simple and short: Hagrid urges Ron and Hermione to hug, Scabbers is found, a group of Ministry officials are seen heading toward the hut, and the Trio is shooed out of the premises by a concerned Hagrid. After a morning rehearsing the takes finally start rolling, and after a few Alfonso Cuaron makes an executive decision.
The director leans on the fenced side of his little coop and talks calmly to an assistant director. “We’re going to try it without the hug,” he says. “We might not have enough of Ron and Hermione’s fight to make it work.” He pouts slightly. “No sex in this movie.”
Alfonso Cuaron can’t seem to make a comment about Prisoner of Azkaban without using the word “sex,” but to hear him say it is to understand what’s so innocuous abut the word from his mouth. He uses it as a quirky little joke, a synonym for puberty and teen drama and hormones and all the little escalations in maturity that make Prisoner of Azkaban the coming-of-age novel it is.
So when he utters the word on set, there’s not a single reaction other than a quiet shifting of papers, a tweak in lines, and a re-do of the scene without the aforementioned hug.
That quiet and steady attitude prevails around Leavesden. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint repeat that scene for as long as child labor laws allow, and are then turned into the hands of the many chaperones. One loudly orders that they take a break; another lets them pal around at the side of the set.
Watching the kids on set makes their normalcy crystal clear. This middle-of-nowhere location is a spot where hours of arduous and repetitive filmmaking happens each day. It’s not a glamorous Hollywood backlot, it’s a dressed-up garage where they do a lot of work, and the grounds are as familiar to the three main actors as a school hallway is to “normal” teens.
After a day of touring for us and a day of working for them, the three teen actors from Harry Potter took time to chat with us about Prisoner of Azkaban, Alfonso Cuaron, school, films, music, the books, and much, much more.
In costume, on their own turf, miles from media blitzes and months from premieres, it resulted in one of the most relaxed and laugh-ridden interviews I’ve ever participated in, or seen the kids give.
Q: Can you tell us about the dementors and what they’re like in this movie and how it is acting against what will later be an effect?
DR: We don’t know what they’re really going to look like.
Emma Watson: We’ve seen some images, basic.
DR: I’ve seen some very sort of rough storyboard things but we haven’t seen any. Alfonso described them to us very very vividly and they ain’t gonna look pretty. They’re going to be really horrific. I think they’re the scariest things in all the Harry Potter books.
Q: How has it been to work with Alfonso Cuaron?
EW: Especially for me, as someone who hasn’t acted in anything else before, it was great working with a new director and doing something different, seeing different techniques, different ideas. It’s also been really good fun, it’s been great.
Q: What kind of different ideas, can you give an example or two?
EW: I think there’s definitely a difference in style just like looking at the two, I mean I’ve only seen a few clips of this third one that’s coming out but Alfonso’s done some amazing things with camera angles and camera shots and this one’s much more flowy and it’s got — you can just tell the difference. Especially with the director, a lot of himself goes into what he’s doing and you can definitely tell the difference.
Q: We heard that he’s bringing out the teenagers in you.
RG: Yeah
EW: Yeah
DR: Oh yes.
RG: He’s a bit different, but it was really sad to see Chris go. But yeah, he’s really good, he’s really fun and we get on really well.
DR: The only clips I’ve actually seen —
EW: Dan’s being very professional and not watching it.
DR: It’s not anything to do with professionalism, I just hate watching myself. [Laughter.] I haven’t seen any kind of difference in styles because I haven’t seen any footage yet so officially I can’t comment but Chris always had this fantastically energetic approach to doing the scenes, which suited the first two films absolutely perfectly and he made two absolutely fantastic films. With the third one, Alfonso has a much more kind of laid back, emotional, intense way of directing.
EW: He wants a lot of our input in the characters. A lot more he kind of said, "Well how would you do it, what would you do it like? No, I’m not going to tell you how to do it, it has to come from what you think and from your own experiences."
Q: Have you seen any of Alfonso’s previous films?
DR: Yeah.
EW: Yeah. A Little Princess. I loved that, I cried in that. Well, I cry in everything, but, it was great. It was really, oh, I loved that film.
DR: I’ve seen A Little Princess, I’ve seen Y Tu Mama Tambien [loud rounds of nervous laughter]. Basically if you’re going to work with any director, I think it’s kind of important to know what kind of stuff they’ve done before. I’m working my way through all Mike Newell’s films at the moment. I just watched Donnie Brasco a couple of days ago.
Q: What would you say was the most interesting sequence for you to shoot or the most challenging?
RG: There’s been a lot of good scenes. The one I like is where I did my dragging thing, that was really good, a dog dragging me into the tree. It’s when the dog drags me into the tree and I had to have this harness on my leg and was dragged across the ground, it was really fun. That was quite difficult I suppose, because I swallowed a lot of grass.
DR: And you had to watch out for the camera as well.
RG: Oh, yeah.
EW: He crashed into the camera quite a lot of times.
RG: I kicked the lens of the camera off.
DR: The important thing to point out, didn’t injure the cameraman!
DR: For me the most interesting scene is probably the Shrieking Shack you know, I’m in the scene with Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and David Thewlis all at the same time, it’s like, “Oh my god, fantastic!” You know you’re surrounded by absolutely some of the most amazing actors, so that’s probably the most interesting. Most challenging it could have been the same one, it could have been actually the same scene because it is, you do, obviously you’re putting in effort all the time, but particularly when youre with Gary Oldman and David Thewlis and Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, you’re going to really, really go for it. So also all the stuff that went on with having my soul sucked out, that’s also slightly harder.
EW: For me like Dan I found the Shrieking Shack was very challenging. It took quite a long time. We were in there for —
DR: What, a month?
EW: More than that maybe. It’s such a complex scene, and a lot is happening in it, and so a lot of it kept changing and that was hard and its’ all quite emotional really. Well not emotional, but —
DR: You feel drained after —
EW: Yeah you do feel drained.
DR: Another thing was that the walls actually leaned and creaked, so we couldn’t actually hear what each other was saying.
EW: So we had to do it like doubly loud.
TLC: Last year I asked you guys to predict what would happen to your characters. Now that you read the fifth book, can you update me?
DR: Oh - I’m sticking with mine. Mmhm.
EW: What was the prediction?
DR: Oh you two are definitely, you’re madly in love. Over to you two!
[Laughter. A blushing Emma and Rupert seem to be slightly flustered, so someone asks a new question.]
Q: Have you guys done the scene with the boggart yet, and what was that like?
EW: We didn’t actually get to do it? Did we?
DR: You did, you had the spider.
RG: Oh yeah.
DR: But nothing was there.
RG: There was a picture of a spider.
Q: You get to wear a lot of your clothes in the last half of this movie. Does that help you feel more like yourself?
DR: Obviously in the first two films the story dictated that we were just in uniform a lot of the time, because a lot of the story takes place during the school year, where as in this one a lot of it takes place during the holidays. So I think it makes it slightly more relaxed I supposed.
EW: I definitely felt that.
RG: [Shaking head in disagreement] Ron’s clothes are very itchy jumpers.
EW: In uniform everyone looks the same and I think it’s good because it got all sort of different people’s personalities out.
Q: There are lots of new sets in this one. Do you get as excited as fans do about what’s going to go on the air?
DR: Absolutely.
EW: Yeah! Completely.
DR: It was actually, it got to the point — there were a lot of visitors to the set and they’d come on and I’d say, “What did you see?” and they’d say, “Oh, the Shrieking Shack, we saw that,” they’re just listing off things that I haven’t even seen!
Q: What are your favorite new sets in this one?
RG: This one [the courtyard] is really cool.
DR: And they’ve got a huge, did you see the pendulum? It’s fantastic. But it’s like, I think in one shot in the outtakes we’re just all swinging. But this one’s really cool, especially when it’s covered in snow in one of the scenes, amazing.
EW: I still walk around with my mouth open. The stuff that they do is just amazing. And there’s some great stuff. We did a bit of location for about a month in Scotland and the scenery was just breathtaking, it was amazing. Massive mountains and proper fresh air and it was really good.
Q: How did it feel to shoot in Scotland, away from the studio?
DR: It was rainy.
EW: Understatement of the century.
DR: And it’s not normal rain, it’s horizontal rain. Umbrellas are rendered useless. It’s, it is really good to get out of the studios for a while.
Q: You guys are obviously great friends. Do you have time when you’re not shooting between movies to hang out together?
DR: If you hung around with me for a year you wouldn’t want to spend that much more time with me. [Laughter from Emma Waston.] Don’t laugh!
EW: Sorry, sorry.
DR: We are with each other so much of the time, that we kind of need a break from each other by the end.
Q: A lot of the same crew has returned - do you guys have friendships among them?
DR: Oh yeah. It’s just like a huge family.
EW: Yeah like a huge harry potter family.
TLC: Emma are you wearing a time turner?
[Emma Watson laughs and blushes.]
DR: It’s a bit of fake one.
TLC: It’s a fake one?
EW: All right, are you ready for it? [Reveals the rest of the necklace.] It’s a fish weight. [Laughter.]
DR: There is a very good one.
EW: There is actually a very, very good one.
DR: Yeah it’s brilliantly detailed.
EW: I’ve broken about three of them so they gave me a fish weight instead.
Q: Rupert we saw a bit of you two filming [the scene where Ron and Hermione make up]. Can you tell us a bit about the dynamic between you two in this film, and does that scene resolve what’s been going on throughout the rest of the movie?
RG: We get to argue a lot in this one.
EW: Yeah, it’s good.
RG: Emma’s character’s got a cat.
EW: It’s all about the rat and the cat. It’s like Tom and Jerry all over again.
Q: Can you talk about working with those animals?
DR: A bat landed on my head. [Laughter.] It was actually very funny. I actually really love the animals, especially the lizards. The lizards are so cool. And the mice are fighting — the mice are fantastic. We’re taking bets on them. It’s between who’s gong to win or who’s going to escape first.
RG: Spiders I hate, but when we were in there with the bat I didn’t know I was scared of bats as well. [Laughter. Rupert makes a disgusted face.] Horrible!
Q: What about rats?
RG: There is a massive rat, absolutely huge.
Q: What other stuff is there?
Trio: Mice, lizards, bats, a six-legged tortoise.
Q: And do you two [Emma and Rupert] get to hug in this scene, are we going to see this? We saw a bit at the end of Chamber of Secrets — what’s going to happen, do we see anymore?
EW: No, [the hug] might be cut!
DR: We’re not sure, it was originally.
EW: It was. But we’re not sure.
Q: Is it because you two just refused to do it?
[Laughter.]
Warning: Possible Spoiler:
TLC: We saw on the storyboard, something about a rock…?
EW: The thing is, that when she it’s sort of complicated she turns back in time, so she’s watching herself in Hagrid’s Hut, and she throws the stone - to warn Hermione in Hagrid’s Hut, who recognizes the stone, that Dumbledore [getting flustered]
DR: [Putting out his hand as if to stop her from hurting herself] Emma, don’t
EW: It’s complicated
TLC: No, I got you.
DR: We were hoping at the beginning was, rather than the time turner, we were hoping — you know, new director, maybe a new spin on things, so instead of a time turner we were hoping for the car from Back to the Future. That’s what we were all really gunning for. The thing inside, the flux capacitator or something, I wanted one of those really badly.
Q: Did you guys bond with David Thewlis like [your characters] are supposed to bond?
[Enthusiastic assent from all three.]
DR: I spent a lot of time with him because basically the core emotional scenes in the film are with Lupin and Harry. Those are the main emotional scenes in the film so I spent a lot of time with him, and it was very interesting, actually, working with him.
Q: And they actually built a hippogriff, what was that like?
EW: It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
DR: It was fantastic. It’s, I’m not even going to try and explain. Here, it’s [stands up and moves back a few feet (away from the recorders)] I’ll shout um about here [points to spot where beak would be, which is a few inches above his head. ] So it’s pretty big.
Q: How did you get on with the cat playing Crookshanks?
[Instant groans from the boys.]
EW: Oh, I love my cat! They are so rude to my cat!
RG: It’s the ugliest cat.
DR: It looks like it’s been thrown against the wall at birth.
EW: Okay, so it’s got a flat nose.
DR: It doesn’t have a nose! It’s just 2D! It’s like the cartoon cat!
EW: It’s beautiful in its own ugly way.
DR: Notice the word UGLY.
[Laughter throughout.]
Q: What did Alfonso have you do to prepare for this film?
DR: We all wrote essays actually.
EW: Yes, we all wrote essays.
DR: And both me and Rupert were put to shame by Emma’s sixteen page essay! [Laughter.] No, no, it was fantastic! It really was fantastic…
RG: I don’t think I ever actually handed mine in…
[More laughter.]
DR: I wrote one on four sheets of paper, which I was so proud of, and then we see Emma’s written a three-volume novel! We were all slightly put to shame by that.
Q: What were the essays about?
DR: It was basically the state of our characters at the beginning, when we first meet them at the beginning of the third film.
TLC: Do you remember anything of what you said?
DR: I don’t remember, I have got a copy…
Q: Do you think that helped you, writing those things?
DR: Definitely. And every time there’s a huge scene I have it in the front of my script so every time there’s a big scene I try to read over it a couple of times.
EW: Just for the record, I have big handwriting.
[Laughter.]
DR: And mine is incredibly small! Mine would have been a huge book, but, it just wasn’t.
Part 6: Great Things
You hear him talk about the film and he just lights up. Hes so childlike. Hes a big kid at heart.
That him is Alfonso Cuaron, who is hopping around the set, directing. After we were through touring we returned to the Hagrids hut set, where filming on the hug/no-hug, finding of Scabbers, executioner-arrives moment was still going on.
I think you owe someone an apology! Hermione protests while Ron is exclaiming over his reunion with Scabbers.
Its all right, Ron responds. Next time I see Crookshanks, Ill let him know.
I meant me!
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! you can hear Cuaron enthuse when the take is called a cut.
During a short break, the group of people standing around launch into action. Emma Watson stands stock still while four people fuss over her makeup, wardrobe and microphone.
Alfonso Cuaron, meanwhile, gets himself out of the cage to which hes been relegated; the impish little man stops by to say hello, and gestures to his former enclosure, which keeps the bats from having free reign with the studio. They keep us in the cage, because otherwise, we try to fly out, he jokes, before heading off for another between-take task.
Its almost easy to believe that the real reason the cast and crew went to Scotland, to film in forests and places like Virginia Water Royal Lake, was so Cuaron could have more room to stretch his legs and bounce around while directing.
Meanwhile Daniel Radcliffe has caught Robbie Coltranes ear. The two sit by the side of the hut, and Radcliffe is clearly in the middle of a joke; his hip swings out and his hands are making manic gestures; its almost as if hes performing a one-man show. Coltrane chuckles. Youre bad, he tells him.
He does this often, Coltrane says: I think hes got a hankering to be a comedian, Dan. He keeps telling me jokes; he goes, Youre really going to hate this one, okay, then he tests me. If I havent seen him for a while he gives me 40 jokes.
As it turns out, Coltrane had a lot to say on the Prisoner of Azkaban experience. He sat with us under a lunch tent and chatted, and the only difficult part was getting him to stop talking about Macintosh computers and voice-recognition software so we could do the interview.
How does his directing style differ from Chris Columbus’s?
Chris was always very hands on. One of the many things I liked about Chris is that he wasn’t one of those directors who sits by those monitors and goes “Again, no, again.” Between takes he runs to the set, tells everybody what was wrong, so everyone knows what was wrong, so then you have a chance at doing it right next time — which you would have thought was an obvious thing, but it’s something a lot of directors miss. No names, no, “Bad girl!” So he’s, yeah, he’s very hands-on. He’s very good with the kids too because he’s got that kind of, they’re kind of strange, they’re at that very odd age. … And so he does that, he knows exactly how protective they need to be but he also knows that they’re up for a little bit of semi-adult, semi, you know.
There’s quite an interesting bit [filming] today where Hagrid insists that Hermione and Ron have a hug because they’ve been fighting all year, so they hug and they have a sort of ehh [whimpery], childish hug and then you think ahhh [interested], and then they think ehhhh [grossed out]! And that’s really only possible at 11, 12 [years old]. So he brings little moments like that.
Q: Chris told us that he would have to work with [the kids] and work with them, get them all ready to go and then really shoot otherwise
Definitely definitely.
Q: So they have a little more stamina now?
They have tons of stamina, that’s not the problem — its matter of directing it. It’s a matter of saying the boots have to go on and then we have to go into the car or we will miss the plane. But also, as an adult, actually, you’re very good at accessing parts of your emotional memory, that’s what you get paid for. But it’s quite different with children. You have to really sit down and say, “Do you remember what it was like when you thought you were going to get such and such for your birthday and then it turned out you got something really sensible like a watch? “Oh God, yeah.” “Well try to remember that, and hold it, stand by!” He was really brilliant to that. Now they’re much more kind of, they’ve lived a lot more and they have more access to feelings they have, so it’s a different process.
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