On New Year’s Day came Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts out on HBO Max. It can’t be seen here in the Netherlands yet, but the revelations are already there.
In this article we list the 15 biggest revelations for you. We’ll dive right in!
#1: Chris Columbus only made the movies because his daughter Eleanor practically forced him to read the books. When he read them, he immediately knew what the film should look like.
#2: Rupert Grint and Emma Watson clicked with the casting team right away. But Harry was hard to find, until Columbus saw a young Daniel Radcliffe on a BBC version of David Copperfield. He approached his parents, but because the filming took place in Los Angeles, his parents didn’t want it: it was too much of a disturbance in his life. In the end, it was producer David Heyman who persuaded Radcliffe’s parents.
#3: JK Rowling wrote a complete rulebook on Quidditch so Chris Columbus and Stuart Craig could portray the sport realistically.
#4: Jason Isaacs first auditioned for the role of Gilderoy Lockhart. Columbus asked him to audition for the part of Lucius Malfoy, which he really didn’t want. Isaacs auditioned “with tense jaws, very bitter” and that turned out to be perfect.
#5: Daniel Radcliffe and Gary Oldman are as close as Harry and Sirius. Daniel was 14 at the time of filming and Gary Oldman immediately bonded with the young actor.
#6: Alan Rickman wanted to know the complete backstory of Snape and so also knew how he ended up being loyal to Dumbledore and in love with Lily Potter. So the actor knew about it from the beginning, but he never shared it with anyone.
#7: Emma Watson fell madly in love with Tom Felton during the shooting of the first film. Ten-year-old Watson watched Felton draw god and “a girl with a cap backwards on a skateboard” signed. Felton always saw her as a younger sister.
#8: Ralph Fiennes took on the part of Voldemort because his sister Martha’s children told him to.
#9: Mike Newell was the first director to treat the cast members as adults. In the movie, Voldemort returns and that is a kind of cold shower for Harry and his friends. They realize they are adults and to help the cast, the creator treated them that way too.
#10: Daniel Radcliffe was in love with Helena Bonham Carter and even wrote a note confessing it. “I love you. If only I had been born ten years earlier, I might have had a chance.” Radcliffe was ashamed of the note, but Bonham Carter appears to have kept it and in her toilet.
#11: Emma Watson wanted to leave after the fourth film. She couldn’t handle the fame well. Rupert Grint also struggled with that.
#12: Evanna Lynch wrote letters to JK Rowling in which she wrote life “a bit hopeless to find without Harry Potter”. Rowling wrote back and when Lynch auditioned for the film she was cast as Luna Lovegood.
#13: Helena Bonham Carter turns out to have stolen a lot of things from the set, including her terrifying teeth from Bellatrix Lestrange.
#14: Emma Watson hated having to kiss Rupert Grint during filming. The feelings were mutual and of course understandable; they’ve known each other since they were eleven and saw each other more as brother and sister.
#15: The cast found it hard to forget their character when off the set; not surprising, if you’ve been recording for a decade.
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