In The News
Dan, Rupert, and Emma Talk "Half-Blood Prince" and Beyond in New Interviews
HBP FilmCanada’s Edmonton Sun Newspaper has two new interviews online where they sit down with Dan Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), along with “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” director David Yates and its producer David Heyman, to discuss many different topics related to the sixth film. These interviews focus on the casts’ thoughts and experiences on the sixth Harry Potter film, which is currently in production, and their expectations of the seventh film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” set for release in 2010. Having grown up in these roles, Dan, Rupert, and Emma speak on this in the first of the interviews, which go into detail about acting, their passion for it, and their future prospects. Director David Yates begins this article simply by saying the casting of the young trio is “a remarkable thing.”
Harry Potter film producer David Heyman gives much of the credit to Chris Columbus, who chose and directed the young actors in the first two films “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” He says:
“Chris Columbus deserves huge credit in casting who he cast… They were obviously not the only choices he had. These were the choices he made and I am forever grateful to him for that.”
Speaking to the subject of making the “Harry Potter” films with a sense of professionalism and dedication, even at a young age, Dan Radcliffe is quoted as saying:
“I don’t think the franchise, in a way, needs any justification because it is such a leviathan of a thing anyway. Things don’t get that big without merit.
“But, I suppose, it (extra work on the DVDs) is almost to prove to people that we are, in fact, taking this very seriously. More seriously than people would probably assume. I took it very seriously when I was 11 and (growing up in the Harry Potter role) I’ve taken it more and more seriously.
“So, to me, it’s just about letting people know that I’m incredibly serious and passionate about this – this series of films – and how much they mean to me. If you’ve been involved in something for more than seven years now, you want to be able to talk about it articulately and explain why you love it, explain why you loved being involved in it so much.”
The Harry Potter films are not the only things on the young actor’s minds, as Emma Watson also relates in this article, working on future projects will determine whether this is the true career path for her. She says of this decision:
“I did a film for the BBC, called Ballet Shoes, in the summer. Having an experience outside of Harry Potter really helped me. I think it convinced me that this is where I am meant to be and this is what I’m meant to be doing: That I do want to be an actress.
“But I think I needed to have an experience outside of Harry Potter because, in a way, I was really plucked out of obscurity and given this role. I mean, I really wanted it but it never felt like a decision that I made. It just happened to me. I felt that I won the lottery. So I’ve always kind of slightly questioned it.”
Dan, Rupert, and Emma also spend more time talking of the “Half-Blood Prince” film in the second interview, where Dan comments on the ‘tonal shift from the brooding atmosphere of The Order of the Phoenix’ by noting his his personal preference for the “morbid” undertones verses the lighter aspects of the story. He explains this by saying:
“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’m doing, I always lean toward the dark side and I really enjoy doing the dark stuff.
“I know Emma and Rupert really, really like the lighter stories and all that. And Rupert particularly is really going to have a field day on this, because he’s got fantastic comic timing and he’ll be able to use all of that to great effect on this film with his relationship with Lavender Brown.
“(But) I’m actually going to miss doing all the morbid stuff, I think.”
Dan describes his eagerness for the seventh film by calling it “the one last hurrah, that film. That’s going to be great. I really am very, very excited about the whole thing. It’s going to be epic, I hope.” While Rupert Grint speaks to the new production by noting, like each of the films, its “own sort of atmosphere,” and goes on to say:
“It’s got sort of a dark undertone to it because Voldemort is back and that is quite a scary time for them. But there are some really cool bits in it. Ron gets a girlfriend in it, so that’s going to be quite cool.”
Continuing on this subject of romance in the film, producer David Heyman is also quoted as saying of the balancing of these emotions:
“It’s much more comedy and the awkwardness of romance. And the romance goes beyond Harry into Hermione and Ron and other characters. I also think it’s about characters growing apart as well as realizing the importance of one another.”
The article concludes to describe a certain ‘awkward reference’ to the wand of Albus Dumbledore in an original draft of the “Half-Blood Prince” script, which had to be revised in light of the publication of author J. K. Rowling’s seventh novel “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” this past July. Heyman says of this revision: “For obvious reasons (if you’ve read the seventh book) it had to be changed.”
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” will be released in theaters November 2008.
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I have thought the filmmakers ignored -too much- the great humor Jo puts in her books but she levels it so well with tragedy and darkness
it should also be balanced in the films as well.
Hopefully this film will not turn into a teenage romantic comedy.:(
I am looking forward to it very much but I hope
the seriousness that is also in the book is also there.
Anytime I can read an interview fron Daniel Radcliffe I’m having a great day.This one didn’t disappointment and as usual let me know his mind setand his vocabulary so amazes me. Loved Yates ,David Heyman’s and Elmelda Strauton’s comments about the trio. I’m hoping also that Yates can buy Columbus that pint [or two].
Heh. No light stuff in the near future for Mister Radcliffe (I can hear a collective awww from the danlovahs…mwahaha)
Sounds cool! I am dying to see the movie and my computer wont even let me watch the interview sniff sniff but o well like i said i can not wait for HBP and DH
-HPfreak
I really don’t like that they’re calling this film a light romantic comedy. No, I don’t like that at all. The humour and the romance is fun, yeah, but it’s hardly the most important thing in the book… :S
GREAT ARTICLE!!! Loved the links!!!! The trio has matured and I miss the little munchkins.
Maturing child stars everywhere, take note, you don’t have to go crazy and make fools of yourselves when coming of age!!!!.
As for the HBP being a little lighter . . . quiet before the storm.
i agree Amy S.i dont like to all.i want half blood prince not comedy.this is not children movie now plaese dont do this.i dont care hermione&ron relantionship.
I bet Dan is bored, after doing Equus, everything else must seem pretty tame.
Once Dan is done with HP, and all that phase is left behind him, I truly doubt we’ll see him again in kid roles.
He leans to the dark stuff, he worships Oldman, he’s made some heavy connections and I wouldn’t be surprised if he just acted in whatever quirky, odd or out of the ordinary role he could get his hands on. He’s got enough money NOT to do it for the cash so he might not be interested in formulaic FX blockbusters for the near future. Which is good. If he manages to shed the HP image succesfully I’m sure he’ll have a bright acting career ahead of him.
I love it when interviewers get Emma to talk about the books. Her answers are always so thoughtful. I’d love to hear more from her about them. Come on media, it’s way past time to move on from the usual boring questions…this girl’s got Hermione-like BRAINS!
And Dan…well he’s grown up so beautifully and I ADORE him!
After reading this, it’s clear to me the only one who put attention while reading the books is Radcliffe. What on earth is what Emma Watson is talking about? Hermione is not the center of the world! she is not the one who made Harry realize that, it was Dumbledore who told him that he needs his friends. I’m a little tired of Emma stealing things from Dumbledore, it seems Kloves is not the only one who likes to do that. And although I agree with some of you that humor is one of the great things of these books, there is a lot of dark stuff in the last 2 books. It’s stupid, in my opinion, they have forgotten about Jo’s fantastic sense of humor in the previous 5 movies and now they want to put all of it in just one?? I hope I’m wrong but I have the impression the filmakers (producers, director, scriptwriter…) are giving too much importance to things that are secondary in the book, and they are forgetting the important plots. The only romantic relationship really important in HBP book is Harry and Ginny, I wouldn’t even call Ron-Laverder a relationship. And things like quidditch are not important either, it’s just a way Jo uses to show other things. But it seems they are forgetting about Harry learning about Voldermot’s past, the horcruxes, Harry learning more about Snape too, Dumbledore and Harry spending more time together, even things like Lupin and Tonks are much more important than quiditch and stupid WonWon and his Lav Lav and Emma’s wish to make Hermione the center of the world.
Good interview: I wouldn’t worry too much about the “romantic comedy” thing, I take that more as an acknowledgment that HBP is tonally somewhat lighter than the brooding OotP.
In all honesty, now that I come to think about it, the regression towards frothier adolescent school hijinks that characterises much of the first two-thirds of Half-Blood Prince has always been one of my central problems with it; tonally, it seems like a weird backwards step in a series that otherwise gets gradually and logically darker as it progresses. I mean, on the one side of Book Six you’ve got Harry’s isolation, the death of Sirius and the tyranny of Umbridge, and on the other side you’ve got Dumbledore’s murder and the dark duty of the Horcrux search; in this context, all the lightweight dalliances with Romilda Vane, McLaggen, Lav-Lav and the Slug Club just seemed oddly trivial and tonally out of kilter to me, a weird throwback to the more carefree days of Books Two and Three, but one that seemed out of place in the darker post-GoF climate. I guess all of the books featured a balance of humour and drama to some extent, but HBP’s tonal problems were compounded by the fact that its main narratives were the weakest of the series, in my view: the “what’s Malfoy up to” plotline felt like a diluted retread of CoS’s whodunnit structure, whilst the actual Half-Blood Prince/mysterious textbook strand promised a lot, but didn’t really go anywhere in the end. As such, they just ended up getting swamped by the “light relief” elements of the story…thank goodness, then, for the intriguing Pensieve plotline, which picked up the slack of the other storylines and kept the momentum going long enough to ease the book into its fantastically dramatic ending, one of the best 100 pages in the whole series. For me, that’s what really rescued HBP, and it’ll be what I’m lloking forward to seeing come November 2008. In that respect, seems like I’m with Mr. Radcliffe… :)
I have to say, a good portion of this book is quite romantic-comedy-like (no no, not all of it). The interview said something like ‘While Half-Blood Prince does have dark passages it will emphasize the romantic entanglements,’ which I think sounds quite nice. I’ll enjoy the last big hurrah of romance and comedy while I can, as DH will certainly be almost all dark.
I’m with Dan all the way! the OOTP movie was fantastic because it was dark, deep and emotional, I hope they’re not turning HBP in a romantic comedy. Dan is great in angsty scenes (like sirius’death) so I hope they’re going to give him the chance to show his acting skills again. After all dumbledore dies in this one, so it’s definetely not so “light”
Ugh, I wish they’d stop talking up HBP as this light-hearted comedy. I know there’s very little plot for the Gryffindors in this one apart from the godawful OBHWF stuff but this story has Riddle’s past, Dumbledore dying, Snape killing him, Draco being assigned a mission by Voldemort, Harry nearly killing him; it’s not exactly sunshine and lollipops. I’d rather the attention was focused on more neglected members of the cast rather than ignoring all the interesting drama for unimportant stuff like shipping.
What Jane said. Another vote for actually putting some plot into this one!
I think it’s going to be allright. They are talking about the romantic-comedy-thing a lot to show it’s going to be more light-harted than OOTP. It doesn’t mean they are going to ignore the dark stuff. They won’t forget the plot. With OOTP everyone was complaining that there was no quidditch and not enough ron and hermione. THEY ARE GIVING YOU WHAT YOU ASKED FOR PEOPLE, a lot of ron/hermione, harry/ginny, quidditch and as we saw in the preview, a lot of dumbledore. I would actually like to take my hogwarts-mates and smell the flowers for one more time, before the serious action starts in Deathly hallows.
it sounds like they got the book perfect. Book 6 wasn’t as dark as the rest of the other books. The only truly dark moment was the last few chapters of the book. I think david yates would build it up to that suspenseful ending. Or build the scenes as if hogwarts wasn’t in too much danger till the deatheaters attacks. I think this movie would be perfect for those who haven’t read the book because they would be shock to see hogwart, harry’s true home, being attack by death eaters.
Yay! Can’t wait for the movie! Would be cool, would be like a “romantic comedy” hehehehe. Love you Rupert!
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aw.. another interview with these trio. I love them much!