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July 2009 

Return to Table of Contents July 2009

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Interview: Daniel Radcliffe
Why So Serious?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince may have a lighter tone than most Potter pics, but that doesn’t mean Daniel Radcliffe has to like it


By Bruce Kirkland

Daniel Radcliffe is hacking with a cold; he is dead tired from an exhausting shooting schedule; and yet he is still game to speak to the media on the set of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth movie in the famous franchise.

 

Even reduced to physical rubble, Radcliffe puts on a good front and remains utterly charming. He wants his visitor to know he is dedicated to his responsibilities as Harry Potter, not that the Potter world will collapse if he does not talk about it.

 

“I don’t think the franchise needs any justification,” Radcliffe says with a smile. “It is a leviathan of a thing anyway. You don’t get that big without merit. But I suppose it’s to prove to people that we are taking things very seriously, more seriously than people probably assume.”

 

Radcliffe uses “we” in the sentence, but not in the pretentious royal-“we” sense. He is collectively referring to himself and co-stars Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), who have also grown up on screen as Harry Potter’s core trio.

 

“People assume that, if you get a job at 11, you will never take it seriously,” Radcliffe says. “And I took it fairly seriously at the age of 11 but I’ve taken it more and more seriously [with each film].”

 

We are sitting in what looks like a café or bistro, but it only has two walls since it’s actually a movie set hidden away in a back corner of the funky, dingy and somewhat dilapidated interior of Leavesden Studios. The aging facility, located amid picturesque farmland in Hertfordshire, England, outside Radcliffe’s hometown of London, is a former Rolls-Royce factory where the company made engines for airplanes starting in the pre-World War II period.

 

The roof leaks, admits Harry Potter producer David Heyman, who is the franchise’s key behind-the-scenes figure. He employs four full-time roofers to run about patching holes in ceilings — and still workers have to position buckets around the sets to catch dripping raindrops. But the Potter empire has been built up here since the first movie and permanent sets, such as the Great Hall, remain intact for every movie. Leavesden is also the home for the final two parts of the franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with Part I set for release in 2010 and Part II in 2011.
  

As we speak on the set of Half-Blood Prince, Radcliffe is eager to get on with it, to get right to shooting the Deathly Hallows movies. But, in the meantime, his Half-Blood co-stars are delighted this sixth movie has turned into a romantic comedy, despite its dark passages and the darker tone of the J.K. Rowling book. Director David Yates even calls it “the Harry Potter comedy, in a way,” during a separate interview.

 

“I love the shift to six,” Yates says of Half-Blood Prince. “I really love five because it’s quite tight and tense. Order of the Phoenix is about that turbulent time when you’re growing up. Six to me is like a release because it is quite funny. It does have its intense bits at the end. But I love comedy and we’re getting some great stuff, with Rupert particularly.”

 

Radcliffe is not quite as happy with the lighter turn, although that in no way should be seen as criticism. It comes up when I suggest to him, after talking to his co-stars, that “everybody” is delighted to be taking a lighter tone than usual in Half-Blood Prince. That is especially true because several characters, including Hermione and Ron, have new romances. “Everybody is not delighted, to be honest,” Radcliffe says with a mischievous grin. He is the exception. “I think the script’s great and I think it’s going to be a really great film. But I’m just one of those people that, in what I love doing, I always lean towards the darker side. I really enjoy doing the darker stuff. I know Emma and Rupert really, really like the lighter stories. And Rupert, particularly, is going to have a field day on this one because he’s got fantastic comic timing and he’ll be able to use all of that to great effect on this one, through his relationship with Lavender Brown.

 

“But, actually,” he says, “I’m going to miss doing all the really dark stuff.”

 

So it is all about Deathly Hallows for Radcliffe, who did not know during the Half-Blood Prince shoot (and hence this interview) that it would be turned into a two-parter. “Oh, that’s the one last hurrah, that film,” he says of Deathly Hallows. “It’s going to be epic, I hope.”

 

Meanwhile, Half-Blood Prince continues the build-up to that two-part climax. In addition to the romantic stuff, more of Lord Voldemort’s history is revealed. Harry grows more distant from his friends, but partly out of compassion and worry, says Radcliffe. Harry Potter, he says, is constantly struggling with the notion of putting his friends, and his family, in danger because of the plotting around him. Not to mention the looming renewal of the war against wizards that Voldemort is fomenting by the end of Half-Blood Prince.

 

“I think Harry’s instinct is right, which is actually to not sacrifice them but to fight instead and just take the risk,” Radcliffe says of his character’s ongoing struggle with this issue. “I think that is what I probably would do. He doesn’t sacrifice them but what he chooses to do is not risk-free. I think he makes the calculation that, either way in that situation, they would probably end up being killed so we might as well take a chance on life and give it a go and fight on.”

 

That sophisticated response is an indicator of what is keeping the Harry Potter franchise fresh, according to producer Heyman. He says that, like his co-stars, Radcliffe (who turns 20 this month) is growing up in the movies, just as the kids do in J.K. Rowling’s seven books. “I mean, the books are the real reason, the real gift, that allow us to keep it alive, keep it fresh,” Heyman says. “Because [Rowling has] created these characters we’re all invested in. They are growing, they are changing, they are developing in the course of the stories. The books, and the films, they are self-contained units but they are part of an overall saga. I think, in the end, you will have this one story.”


Bruce Kirkland writes for Sun Media.

 

Evanna Lynch: actor/encyclopedia

One of the world’s biggest Harry Potter fans is now part of the Harry Potter cast — and she is still trying to stifle her wide-eyed enthusiasm.

 

Irish lass Evanna Lynch, 19 next month, beat out 15,000 other girls who auditioned for the role of Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The role continues to the end of the series, including in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

 

“Sometimes, I correct them, although I don’t think they would go downhill if I left,” Lynch says of advising the filmmakers about Potter lore on the set of Half-Blood Prince. “But I will try to stifle it.... Sometimes my mind just works on a Harry Potter level and everything is related to it. But I try not to do that in front of [the rest of the cast and crew]. I’m too much of a fan.”

 

Lynch is being modest. Everyone adores her. “You know what,” director David Yates says of the wee wisp of a girl. “She is really handy to have around. If you suddenly have a question, she would immediately know. She is our walking encyclopedia of Potter stuff!”

 

Lynch is now famous for writing reams of letters to Potter author J.K. Rowling. In one letter, she lamented being from the small Irish town of Termonfeckin, because that doomed her ambition to be cast in a Potter movie. Rowling wrote back with encouragement: “Don’t be too hard on Termonfeckin; it does have a brilliant name! And I come from a very sleepy place.”

 

That inspired Lynch to audition — and become part of Harry Potter lore herself.

 

—Bruce Kirkland


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