Matthew Lewis on Working With Emilia Clarke and Re-watching ‘Harry Potter’

Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) can currently be seen in cinemas alongside Game of Thrones and Terminator Genisys star Emilia Clarke in the new romance, Me Before You.

Though Matt worked with amazing actors such as Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson on Harry Potter, Matthew told Bustle that he still found working with Emilia Clarke nerve-wracking due to her ‘disarming’ presence both on camera and on set:

“I remember when I first went in to do rehearsals, I was really nervous, actually, because I had not seen the show, but I had read all the books, and I knew how important her character was in Game of Thrones,” Lewis tells Bustle. “I was just like, ‘Oh god, I hope that I can bring something to the table, I hope I can try and match her.'”

“As soon as I got in the room, she was just so lovely, just so approachable, so easy to talk to.”

“The whole environment of the set was set by her,” Lewis explains. “It was just a really fun environment — we got to come in and play around and try things and do things, and it just felt really comfortable.”

“I was in tears reading the book, trying most pathetically at being manly,” Lewis says with a laugh. “And every time I tried, it was just flowing even more. And then I saw the film a couple months ago… it’s gonna be one of those films that definitely elicits an emotional response, which is brilliant.”

In Me Before You, Matt Lewis portrays Patrick – the ‘well-meaning but oblivious’ boyfriend of Emilia Clarke’s character, Louisa. On his character in the film, Matthew says:

“I was never going to play him as being a jerk, because from my perspective, Patrick doesn’t think he’s a jerk,” Lewis says. “He doesn’t know that he’s being an idiot and he’s being horrible to Lou — he thinks that everything he’s doing is probably fine and normal.”

“It’s very easy to make it black and white, that Will’s [Sam Claflin] brilliant and Patrick’s a bit of a jerk,” the actor adds. “But I think we — Emilia and Jojo and I — wanted to make it a bit more of a grey area.”

Matthew also spoke to ITV’s Lorraine about re-watching the Potter series, though he doesn’t seem to be a big fan of watching himself as Neville anymore, but still says it was a great experience that he was lucky to be a part of:

‘I think I got halfway through the first one and that was enough for me, I didn’t want to see anymore … it’s just like watching home videos of you as a child, it’s difficult sometimes’

Read the full interview with Bustle here, and watch Matthew’s chat with Lorraine below: