Helen McCrory Talks Filming on Spinner’s End for Half-Blood Prince

Jul 11, 2009

Posted by: SueTLC

HBP Film

Actress Helen McCrory has given a new interview where she discusses filming her role as Narcissa Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Noting her appearance in the film is short, she also jokes about the fleeting appearance made by actor Timothy Spall as Wormtail in the Unbreakable vow scene at Spinner’s End. Quotage:

“She appears in the two final films of the series, but warns: “Don’t
reach down for your popcorn, because by the time you do, I could be off
the screen, in Half-Blood Prince I am literally like, whoa, there she
goes! But everyone was like that. In our first scene, Helena Bonham
Carter and I are rolling past this blue screen, and we knock on the
door and Tim Spall comes out.

“Tim pulls open the door and
looks. That took about a day and a half of filming, and then it was,
‘Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap on Mr Spall,’
and you go, that’s it? You have people like Tim, that most producers
are killing themselves to work with, and that’s the fun of doing (Harry
Potter]. Everyone is giving their all and they’re all used to playing
the lead parts. They’re going, ‘How shall I open the door? Do you want
me to do it like this, or like this?’ That sort of attention to detail,
because, you know, they probably last did Hamlet. So David is
surrounded by actors going, ‘Right, I can give you this, or I can give
you that, or I can give you . . .’ and he’s like, ‘Please, please, just
say your one line and f*** off.'” She laughs heartily. “He’s
extraordinary, because it’s a huge project: the pressure!”

As
the mother of two young children ’ with her husband, actor Damian
Lewis, she has a daughter Manon, two, and a son, Gulliver, one ’ I
wonder if she approached Narcissa in the spirit of Cruella de Ville, or
that of a ferocious mum defending her cub?

“In this film it’s
about protecting her son. The fact that you have children probably
makes a bit of a difference, but not enormously, because you do spend a
lot of time as an actor trying to imagine what the other person’s
feeling, anyway. As a woman you’ve played mothers before, and you don’t
have to be a mother to understand what feeling protective is all
about.”





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