Growing up with Harry Potter
(Filed: 24/05/2004)
In the new Harry Potter film, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger emerge from the boy wizard's shadows to become substantial characters – while the pair who play them are becoming talented performers and assured youngsters. David Gritten meets them
Just for once, here's a promotional tag-line for an upcoming film that you can actually believe. "Everything will change," proclaims the advertisement for the third Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban. The truth of that claim is clear from the images of its three young lead actors: they're not children any more.
Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, no longer has a face as perfectly round as his spectacles; these days, he has cheekbones. Rupert Grint, who is Ron Weasley, has swapped his expression of comic, wide-eyed surprise for something more questioning and fearful. As for Emma Watson, playing Hermione Granger, she's starting to look rather glamorous, with windswept hair like a model's.
Yet Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban marks other changes. Cast members are now free from the cuddly embrace of Chris Columbus, the purveyor of wholesome family films (Stepmom, Mrs Doubtfire) who directed the first two Harry Potters. Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón replaces him and his track record is quite different since he is best known for the sexually explicit coming-of-age film Y tu mamá también.
The subject matter of this third film is also much darker. Its story revolves around Sirius Black (played by Gary Oldman), a convicted murderer, escaped from the Azkaban wizards' prison and seemingly intent on killing Harry.
But the biggest change is in the balance between the three young lead characters. The new film spreads the story much more evenly between Harry and his two best Hogwarts chums.
When we meet, Emma Watson wastes no time letting me know this. "The third book is definitely my favourite, and it's a good script for Hermione," she says enthusiastically. "She has some great scenes."
Cuarón confirms this. "In this film Ron and Hermione are companions in adventure. They effectively drive the third act. It's pretty amazing to see," he says.
Watson has strolled into a room in the Harry Potter production offices at Leavesden Studios, Hertfordshire. She sits upright on a sofa with three cushions embroidered with a likeness of Harry Potter and an owl, and chats animatedly.
In the new film she relished a scene with the odious Hogwarts pupil Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), a constant thorn in the sides of Harry and his chums. Hermione gives him a biff on the nose, and says: "That felt good!"
"I loved it! My first screen punch! It was fantastic! It's been building up for ages through the first three films," Watson says, arms flailing in emphasis. "He's been insulting, rude and really hateful. Harry's been going, 'Ignore him, don't say anything,' and suddenly Hermione gets so angry she ends up punching the guts out of him. Fantastic. Very girl power!"
Even apart from this scene, she thinks Hermione is finally coming into her own. "She's had two films of being put down by teachers and rudely insulted by Malfoy. Now she thinks, `Right, that's it, I'm not having any more of this.' She storms out on a teacher, punches Malfoy, fights with Ron. She's really fired up. She's not taking nonsense from anyone."
Watson is disarmingly articulate in explaining this. Slim, petite, with sparkling eyes, she wears a pale green cable-knit sweater over a T-shirt, flared jeans and cream trainers with a gold trim. This is her first film as a teenager (she turned 14 in April) but she speaks with bristling intelligence.
She also has a finely-tuned sense of humour. Since Radcliffe, Watson and Grint landed their roles, they have patiently stressed how little they have in common with their characters. On reflection, they are now less sure.
I have been told that when Cuarón first met the trio, he asked them to write an essay about their characters and their feelings and beliefs. They responded perfectly appropriately: Radcliffe wrote one page, and felt he had done reasonably well. Watson, reacting just like Hermione to a set task, wrote 16 pages, and has since suffered much on-set teasing about it.
"Was it 16 pages?" she says, covering her face and blushing. "Might it have been 12… or a little less? All right, I enjoyed writing it. But my handwriting's big! I leave big spaces between words."
In retrospect, it was useful for her. "It made me see Hermione in a completely different way. Alfonso made me think, why does she do the things she does? Why is she such an annoying bookworm? I thought maybe it's her mask, her front, so she doesn't have to show emotions or feelings. I'd never thought about that before, so for me she became much deeper."
At this point, Rupert Grint enters, sleepy-eyed, having completed a tutoring session. (There is an unofficial Harry Potter "school" at Leavesden, and all the young actors and their doubles have lessons for up to five hours a day.) His red hair is worn longer than in the films, almost falling into his eyes. He is ultra-casual in T-shirt and baggy pants.
A quintessential teen moment between him and Watson ensues. He lurches towards a chair next to the sofa, but is then persuaded to sit beside her. After much eye-rolling from them both, with Watson muttering that he has forced her to move, they finally settle.
I tell him I have heard about the essay. Was it useful for him? His eyes dart wildly around the room. "Well, it would have been," he says finally, "if I'd actually done it."
But did he get away with it? "Yes, actually. Alfonso said that was exactly what Ron would have done." A pause. "Which was a better excuse than anything I'd thought up."
Grint agrees that the new film offers more scope. "There's a story line developing between Ron and Hermione," he reflects. "There's like a little thing going on between them, and a lot of awkward moments. A few hugs. And we fall out a lot as well."
He most enjoys being involved in stunt work. In one scene, Ron is pulled along the ground by a harness, and through a hole in a tree. "That was fun," he says with a smile. "I did swallow a lot of grass, though."
Grint, who will be 16 in August, took to Cuarón: "He was into us having a say about things. He wanted us to customise our school uniforms. He thought it would look good if we all wore differently knotted ties. So I did my uniform a bit scruffy – shirt half untucked, the top button undone." A beat. "A bit like I wear my real uniform, actually. Dan was a bit tidier than me, but Emma being Hermione, everything was perfectly done up."
He's an engaging young man, with a slow smile, and an ability to stay quiet in conversation before delivering a funny line almost sotto voce. He's an intriguing contrast with Watson, who talks fast and energetically, in perfectly formed sentences.
Both want to continue acting. "I'd be up for doing all seven Harry Potter films," Grint says. "I really enjoy acting. You meet new people, go to different locations." Another pause. "It's quite easy, as well."
Watson too has learned that she likes performing."I love art. I love being on stage, singing, dancing. So even if I don't end up acting, maybe I'll try screenwriting, whatever gets thrown at me." She wrinkles her nose. "I can't really see myself in an office."
Adults who know them think they can fulfil these ambitions. Cuarón says of Watson: "She's growing up so beautifully. I'd love to work with her again, away from Harry Potter – maybe in a love story. She listens intensely, and there's an intelligence and warmth about her."
As for Grint, he enthuses: "I've never seen a young actor with such brilliant timing for comedy. But that's Rupert in real life as well. Definitely there's a career there for both of them if they want it."
An important neutral voice is also pushing Watson's claims. Jina Jay, one of Britain's leading casting agents, specialises in finding child actors, including Jamie Bell for Billy Elliot. "I feel Emma has enormous potential as a future leading actress," she says. "I'd expect her to explore her abilities carefully beyond Harry Potter. I also feel she's clever and focused enough to only choose material and directors for whom she feels passionate."
Meeting Watson and Grint, it's striking how unspoiled and natural they seem. It helps that between films (they are currently rehearsing for the fourth) they return to their normal schools. "They're not like stage kids at all," says David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter films. "They don't behave like stars, and we don't treat them as such. A lot of the cast and crew are like family here. They've been on all three films. So the kids get gently teased, and treated like everyone else. There's a mischievous air on set."
It's hard to feel like a star at Leavesden, a remote, sprawling, unlovely studio devoid of glamour. In three years since work started on the first Harry Potter film, only a few fans have even made it as far as the security gates.
Refreshingly, Watson and Grint are determined to remain level-headed. "I still do normal things," Watson insists. "There's nothing I can't do now that I could before the films. I hope I'm exactly the same person." Grint echoes her sentiment: "My friends don't think I've changed. I've tried to stay pretty normal throughout all the films, and my friends and family have helped in that. I've just kept living the same way."
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