Stars of ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe dished about all kinds of things, including their favorite scenes, what it was like growing up as the characters, and the adaptation of ‘Half-Blood Prince’ from book to film. Check out all of the interview here!
What is Hermione’s big moment and big sequence in the sixth film?
WATSON: There’s this mean girl called Lavender who has a bit of a crush on Ron. It’s leaked in the beginning of the film that Hermione and Ron are finally going to get it together, and then she steps in. Hermione is sensitive and quite mean, really. And it’s very much about how she sort of despises Lavender. Not really because she’s taken Ron away, but because she’s kind of the opposite of Hermione. So it’s very comic and also quite sad for her. It’s very Ron based, her part.
Do you think the fans of the book will find “Half-Blood Prince” to be a faithful adaptation?
WATSON: I hope so. I think we’ve stuck as close as we possibly can without making a ten-hour movie. We’ve never had that complaint before, and I personally am such a big fan of the books. I’ve read them each of them three or four times so I think that’s a really good focus for us.
When you look back at the making of this film, what do you think you might remember from it?
WATSON: What really stuck out for me was Ron’s Quidditch scene. It was so funny. Rupert’s comic timing is just brilliant and he’s so funny. There’s this great scene where Hermione and Lavender are fighting over Ron, and we had a bit of fun with that. With Dumbledore’s death scene it was absolutely freezing that night and it was a very sad scene, really.
What are the pros and the cons of having the same directors a couple times in a row versus having different directors coming in each time?
WATSON: It was a lot of fun having new directors because there was more energy and you knew there would be something new every time. But David [Yates] is a very good director and I think he’s done a really good job with it. When you get to know someone you can trust them, and it gave him more a chance to try different things out.
At the very first press junket for the film, David Haymen and Chris Columbus ["Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone's" producer and director, respectively] both said they looked high and low for kids they thought could handle both acting in the film and the fame that would come along with it. How confident were you that you could handle all that? And how different a ride has it been versus what was in your head almost ten years ago?
WATSON: The funny thing is I never realized that I was going to be famous. It never really occurred to me. I was just auditioning for parts and I just loved the character so much. I felt that I knew how to play her and I could be her, and Chris Columbus gave me a lot of confidence. And the fame thing never really hit home, it never did. When you’re doing a movie you’re kind of in a bubble and you don’t really realize the impact it’s having on the rest of the world. It comes in these surreal moments, like a premiere or a film coming out, and I realized that I am famous, but most of the time I forget.
If you continue acting after “Harry Potter” is done do you think you’re going to look for roles that are as far from Hermione as possible?
WATSON: I would like to play someone a bit different, yes. But I’m not going to go play a thug just to get away from Hermione. It will be really interesting if I find anything I feel as strongly about as I felt towards Hermione. I just felt like I had to play the role. It’s very hard to explain, I just felt I had to do it, and I haven’t read another script that I’ve felt that way about.
WIZARD: For you, what’s at the heart of “Half-Blood Prince?” What’s at the core of the story?
RADCLIFFE: Paranoia. There’s a very strong scene in the film that’s all about Harry’s increasing paranoia about Draco Malfoy becoming a member of the Death Eaters. Also, it seems a big part of all the films, but death. We’re even closer to it in this one because Dumbledore is dying and knows he has to die. And the image of this old man knowing all that is a very, very sad one. But he carries on anyway. He doesn’t give up and he absolutely fights until the last minute.
You’ve mentioned before that Michael Gambon did a good job of trying to make you laugh. Was there a moment or a scene where he tried to crack you up? Also, when Michael found out that Dumbledore was gay, did he camp up his antics?
RADCLIFFE: He did camp up, yeah. Michael, playing Dumbledore, has a beard, and he has a beard protector over his head to stop him from getting food in it. Which he does anyway. They made him a new one, which was pink, and he wore it with pride around the set. He’s fantastically funny and he just has a laugh all the time. The amazing thing is, as soon as they say the word ‘action,’ he’s kind of brilliant. It’s quite frightening, really, how good he is.
This film had a mixture of both adventure and some more intimate moments. Which are your favorite scenes to play? Do you like the action or the quieter scenes?
RADCLIFFE: I think that I like the quieter scenes. There’s a lot of action but the quieter scenes will, generally speaking, be where the heart is. That’s not to say there aren’t some emotionally quite intense action sequences, but when there are just two people sitting down talking the stakes are very much higher, emotionally. My favorite scene in the film, actually, is one that I’m that not in, which is probably not that surprising because I hate watching myself. It’s with Rupert (Ron) in Quidditch practice, and it is genuine laugh-out-loud funny. And I don’t laugh out loud that easily.
During the beginning of the series you had the consistency of Chris Columbus directing both the first and second films, but then new people came in for four, five and six. What’s the difference between working with a new director on each film and working with “Half-Blood Prince’s” director David Yates, who will ultimately be on four films in a row?
RADCLIFFE: When a new person comes in it keeps you on your toes. I think in the younger years it was very important that we didn’t get complacent, and I think having different directors helped in that. But the great part about the consistency of using someone like David–and David’s on his third now, he’s doing the one we’re filming at the moment–is that we just know each other very well, professionally. We know how the other wants something to be done and we’re very good at communicating with each other now. And we always were with David–and to an extent all the other directors, they’ve always been really communicative–but with David sometimes nothing needs to be said. I’ll get to the end of the take and I’ll say, ‘Oh sorry, that was crap and let’s go again’ immediately because I know what I did was not what David was looking for.
In the future, when you look back at the making of the six films, what do you think might stick in your mind about the process?
RADCLIFFE: Michael Gambon, when we were doing all these sequences together, would come up with abbreviations for the shots. None of which I can actually repeat because they’re all quite offensive, but they’re very, very funny. Some of them have actually stuck on the Potter set.
One of the sequences, on this last film, was with Tom Felton as Malfoy in the bathroom. Me and Tom have always liked each other but we actually started getting on really, really well in the last film, so that will be one of the binding memories.
What are your plans or hopes for the future after you finish with Harry?
RADCLIFFE: Hopefully I’ll just keep on acting. I’m now in a very fortunate position where I don’t actually have to do anything. Obviously these films, financially, have been very, very good to me. And the joy that comes with that is an incredible freedom to be selective in terms of what you do, and not have to do something because of the money. If you have the freedom to be selective with your projects, you also have the responsibility to be selective.
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