TV Week in Australia has Interviews

May 31, 2004

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

Uncategorized

Australia’s TV Week Magazine has a set of interviews with the trio, and again Daniel mentioned the appearance of Towel Girl during his first interview on Mtv’s Total Request Live as his most amazing fan-experience.
Melissa’s article from that TRL day is off the web, but we’ve recovered the text below.

The small group of Harry Potter die-hards on the sidewalk outside MTV’s Total Request Live had been there for hours; they lied to their parents, cut school, and camped all day in Times Square in the brisk November weather, all for a chance to get close to Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a Harry Potter). They made one mistake – they wore clothes.

The fan who one-upped them, a 23-year-old named Candice, was wearing a Harry Potter toga-towel, carried a picture of him playing quidditch and tagged herself with a sign that read “Nothing gets between me and Harry Potter!” Whether or not the hair-raising stunt appealed to Radcliffe, whose puberty-onslaught is hotter news than was J. Lo’s wedding, was irrelevant – one look at her and host Carson Daly brought her out of the winter wind to meet her beloved 12-year-old.

Meanwhile, on the street, those who had waited all day were anxiously awaiting word from above; the towel girl had promised she would ask Daly to bring them up as well. The call never came.

“I bet she didn’t say anything,” said Jennifer Macaluso, 15, of Staten Island, NY. “That was so Slytherin of her.”

Slytherin is, after all, the house where the cunning Machiavellis go, and towel girl had achieved the end which just may have justified the icy means. But the band of devoted Potterites left in the cold – most likely Hufflepuffs, who toil for rewards and are often robbed of glory – insisted that there were only so many things they’d do to meet Radcliffe. Freezing was not one of them.

“I would wear a robe, and I have the electronic Nimbus 2000, and the glasses,” Yissel Ayala, 15, said. v They got their Harry moment when Radcliffe was ushered to the window to wave to his adoring fans.

“I just melted, his accent just melts me,” Karen Farracane, 15, said. “I was crying, shaking, and everyone points and laughs at me like I’m crazy, but I’m not. I was in love with Harry Potter and now I’m in love with Daniel Radcliffe.”

She had some support a few feet away, where Erin Keane, 10, from Connecticut, stood with her family huddled around, staring up at the window where Radcliffe had appeared and disappeared. Keane’s teacher read the first Harry Potter book to her class, and she’s now reading it on her own. Asked if she “likes” Radcliffe, she gave a blush worthy of Ginny Weasley and the slightest of nods.

Unfortunately for his devotees, the short window-cameo was the only time Radcliffe showed his face. A little sleuth-work by Eugene Pikulin, 15, who won early tickets to the movie on Moviefone.com, revealed that their hero had been ushered away before the end of the broadcast, most likely to the David Letterman studio to tape his next press appearance.

Still, the tiny group stood oustide until the end talking about the movie, the stars, and of course, the girl in the towel.

“They’re probably giving her clothes right now,” one said, more than a little ruefully.

“She’s double his age, she’s a pervert, we should report her to the cops,” Macaluso said.

But they forgot all about their woes when the studio audience started filtering out of the building – one obviously disinterested fellow handed Ferracane a Harry Potter soundtrack he had received in the studio. Ferracane looked at it as if it was a sack of Galleons.

“I watch TRL every day, the stars always give these out! Oh my god, he touched the wrapper!”

And she ripped off the plastic, folded it up, and tucked it safely into a side pocket of her handbag.





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