The Making of the Potterverse (31 page)

RUPERT:
It’s the same, really. I’ve finished school now and so it sort of feels like I’m sort of more grown up now anyway. But Mike was great in a sort of brilliant way.

QUESTION:
Now that you’ve played these characters over four films, do you feel a connection to them? And are you excited about doing the rest of the films?

EMMA:
I’m hugely attached to Hermione’s character, because there’s so much of me that goes into her, and so much of my experience. One thing that Mike did was have me kind of regurgitate my own experiences and sort of put them into her.

DANIEL:
That’s quite disgusting [laughs].

EMMA:
[Laughs] Sorry. He made me apply them to what Hermione was going through. I know that if anyone else were to play
Hermione, I wouldn’t be able to deal with that. It would kill me. I’m hugely close to her.

DANIEL:
That was a good way of putting it. It’s not a pretty image, but you’re absolutely right in that he did make us draw upon our own experiences. I think that you can’t really help but feel attached to your character. I certainly can’t help but feel attached to [Harry] in some ways. I don’t know about twins. I don’t know if me playing him has turned out how I am like him now, or being so close to him over the past five years has influenced my own character. I mean, I don’t think that I’m going to develop a complex over it or anything, but it’s a sort of slightly interesting thing. I mean, it’s very hard to separate yourself from him in some ways, but ultimately you go home at night and it’s not like you stay in character all the time. It would be very hard to be a method actor on Harry Potter, because then you’d have to find the figure of ultimate evil somewhere, and they don’t exist. So that would be my not-particularly-clear answer to that question.

Definitely proving his desire to stretch his acting muscles, Daniel Radcliffe agreed to star in Peter Shaffer’s controversial play
Equus
, which would require him to appear on stage in the nude.
Harry Potter
veteran Kenneth Branagh would direct. Some time later his spokesperson Vanessa Davies would note, “It is an extraordinary play, and he’s very much looking forward to the role. He is maturing as an actor and beginning to take on new and challenging roles.”

On her official Web site, J.K. Rowling expressed her feelings about writing the seventh and final novel in the Harry Potter series. “I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can’t wait to get started. I have been fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan for [book] seven during the past few weeks so I can really set to work in January.”

The year ended with actor Robbie Coltrane — better known as Hagrid to Potter fans — being given an OBE (Order of the British Empire).

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
was confirmed as the bestselling book of 2005, selling 7.2 million copies.

The film version of
Goblet of Fire
broke all IMAX records in its presentation on those giant-screened theaters.

In an interview with Britain’s
Telegraph
, J.K. Rowling discussed Harry and the fact that he was “born” the day her mother died. “I know I was writing
Harry Potter
at the moment my mother died,” she reflected, “I never told her about [him]. Barely a day goes by when I do not think of her. There would be so much to tell her; impossibly much.” In the same interview, she admitted that she had a hard time dealing with fame, explaining that it was as though she had been living under a rock for such a long period of time and suddenly someone lifted that rock off and began shining a flashlight on her. “I was petrified,” she admitted, “and didn’t know how to handle it.”

Thousands of hopeful teenage girls between 13 and 16 braved the cold in London to try to audition for the part of Luna Lovegood in the fifth film adaptation,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
.

Security guard Aaron Lambert was found guilty of having stolen two copies of
The Half-Blood Prince
before its publication date, and threatening a reporter with what turned out to be a fake gun. The sentence was four and a half years in jail. Proclaimed judge Richard Bray, “You realized the books had considerable potential value. It was only through the good services of the press and police that fans of Harry Potter — both young and old — were able to read the book without their pleasure being polluted by the premature publication of the plot.”

Thousands of teenage girls braved the chilly weather in the hope of securing the role of Luna Lovegood in
Order of the Phoenix.
(Sang Tan/AP Photo)

J.K. Rowling announced that she would be visiting Romania to participate in a fundraising event for The Children’s High Level Group, which focuses its attention on child health and development in Romania and across Europe.

Casting news for
Order of the Phoenix
: Actor George Harris was brought on for the role of Kingsley Shacklebolt, a Dark Wizard catcher; and Robbie Jarvis as the younger incarnation of Harry’s father, James Potter.

Both J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe were among celebrity guests for Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday party, a gala devoted strictly to children and the desire to help them explore new worlds and characters through reading.

MTV
heralded the fact that
Order of the Phoenix
would begin shooting early in the month. In a news story on the network’s Web site, the plot was described as follows: “Harry has trouble getting the magical world to believe that evil Lord Voldemort has come back. Only Harry’s close friends and a few supporters (including Professor Dumbledore) take the news seriously, but with the Ministry of Magic officially disavowing the boy wizard’s claims, it’s up to Dumbledore’s newly re-formed anti-evil-wizard league, the Order of the Phoenix, to take matters into its own hands. In the same spirit, Harry forms Dumbledore’s Army, an underground Defense Against the Dark Arts class.”

CBCC Newsround
reported on casting for
Order of the Phoenix
: Sian Thomas as Amelia Bones, Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Office; Charles Hughes as Young Wormtail; Susie Shinner as Young Lily Potter, Richard Leaf as Auror Dawlish and Nick Shim as Zacharias Smith. Returning would be the Dursley family, absent from
Goblet of Fire
. Many fans have written fan fiction chronicling the adventures of young James and Lily Potter.

Britain’s Sony Ericsson Empire Awards, voted on by the British moviegoing public, gave a special award to the Harry Potter films
and “their outstanding contribution to the British movie industry.” Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were there to pick up the award.

Goblet of Fire
sold more than nine million copies in its first week of release on DVD.

Prisoner of Azkaban
director Alfonso Cuaron was asked by
Entertainment Weekly
if he had any interest in returning to the franchise. “The most beautiful two years of my life were on [
Azkaban
],” he told
EW
. “The attraction of
Harry Potter
— not just the movie franchise, but the J.K. Rowling books — is that it’s surrounded by this beneficial energy. So there is a temptation to revisit that. I haven’t ruled it out. On the other hand, nobody knows what the last book is going to be.”

Fans were overjoyed to learn that a deal was set up for Gary Oldman to return as Sirius Black in
Order of the Phoenix
.

J.K. Rowling was dismayed to discover that she couldn’t find pads of paper — her preferred means of writing her novels — in her home city, Edinburgh. “What is a writer who likes to write longhand supposed to do when she hits her stride and then realizes to her horror she has covered every bit of blank paper in her bag? And there’s a university here! What do the students use?” she mused on her Web site. Shortly thereafter, she was flooded with paper from fans.

Oxfordshire
reported that Emma Watson was participating in Oxford’s first International Young Women’s Hockey Festival.

J.K. Rowling was awarded the Book of the Year at the British Book Awards for
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
.