Christian Coulson Discusses Tom Riddle

May 22, 2016

Posted by: Emma Pocock

Actor Interviews, Coulson, Coulson Interviews, Fantastic Beasts Movie, Films, Interviews

Bustle recently sat down with Christian Coulson, to discuss his portrayal of young Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Coulson revealed that he could empathise with his character relatively easily (minus the genocidal, racist tendencies, of course). Raised in Wool’s Orphanage in London, Tom Riddle was a troubled, isolated, child – Coulson says his experience of boarding school helped him empathise with Riddle’s isolation, but also to his slightly darker side:

“I had been at boarding school in a sort of Hogwarts-y school called Westminster, which has been around for about 1000 years … The stone steps leading up to where we had assembly are worn down from hundreds of years boys running up and down them. My parents were abroad when I was there, and I felt like I was an orphan. There was a detached survival mechanism that I really identified with.”

 “I really loved doing that scene with Richard Harris where I’m pretending to be a model student… while really lying to him,” Coulson says. “It reminded me a lot of my experience at boarding school — of being impeccably well-behaved on the outside and secretly getting up to mischief.”

“There’s a lot that isn’t similar about us, but I felt that I understood something about him.There’s something very wrong with him, but I understand what it is,” the 37-year-old actor says. “The things he did [as a teenager] made sense to me in terms of his survival.”

Portraying Riddle at a time when Rowling was still developing his story arc, Coulson enjoyed imagining the depth to his character:

 “From the information in those [four books], it seemed to me that there was a coldness and an emotional absence to his evil, and that was what I was interested in exploring.”

Riddle’s story begins in 1926 – the year Newt Scamander arrived at MACUSA with his magnificent briefcase after being expelled from Hogwarts, and supported by Albus Dumbledore himself. An interesting coincidence, making us wonder if there’s any chance we’ll be getting hints at the dark lord in Fantastic Beasts… or is it too early in Riddle’s life to pull him into the story?

Read the full Bustle interview here.





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.