Authors: David Nolan
Emma was certainly pleased that the script put Hermione and Ron closer to the action. ‘Ron and Hermione kind of took a bit of a backseat on the last one,’ she said, ‘watching Harry do all the tasks and stuff. So it felt really nice to kind of be back in the action again. I mean, nothing major. We had a couple of stunts to do, a couple of harnesses and that sort of thing, which was really fun.’
As ever, the production team whipped out their British road atlases to provide a diverse catalogue of locations for the film. This was by now an established
sleight-of-hand
trick used by producers in an attempt to avoid distracting the audience with too many scenes shot in one place. By constantly changing the backdrops, it stopped cinemagoers being distracted by spotting where a particular scene had been filmed. This time, locations included Burnham Beeches in
Buckinghamshire
, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Fort William in the Scottish Highlands and a starring role for the Thames in central London for a dizzying broomstick flight down the river.
Back on set, Leavesden Studios would be the scene of a key moment in the development of the Potter ‘kids’ –
the first of them to reach the age of 18. Emma admitted that Rupert Grint’s birthday made her very emotional – they really weren’t kids any more. She bought him some surf-style T-shirts to mark the occasion and a party was held in the studio canteen. Emma, Rupert and Daniel had been through so much together; their relationship had changed and grown. ‘They just keep me laughing really,’ she told the
Daily Mail
. ‘They don’t tease me quite as much as they used to, which is nice. It’s funny. It’s been an intense and very long friendship. We’ve known each other for six years now, and have seen each other almost every day. I mean, they’ve seen me in every single state. They have seen me at my most glamorous and they have seen me at six in the morning with no makeup on. They do feel like my brothers. And we’ve been through all the ups and downs of this mad experience together.’
But for how much longer would they be truly going through the ‘mad experience’ together? As production on
Order of the Phoenix
continued, it was revealed that, while Radcliffe and Grint had signed on for the next film –
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
– Emma had not. Emma would later reveal that, during the making of
Order of the Phoenix
, she felt trapped by the punishing schedule that the film created. She experienced what she would later describe as a ‘freak-out’ about trying to juggle filming, impending A levels and being a teenage girl. ‘I felt I’d been ripped into a million pieces,’ she said.
Despite some press claims that the stumbling block was a financial one, Emma insisted that the issue was not
money and that she’d do the films ‘for nothing’. There were even reports that her parents disagreed about whether she should continue at all. Emma was torn over making a decision. ‘I love to make people laugh and I love being creative, but there are so many other things I love doing too,’ she later told
Entertainment Weekly
. ‘I have such a structure when I’m working on Potter. I get told what time I get picked up. I get told what time I can eat, when I have time to go to the bathroom. Every single second of my day is not in my power.’
Producer David Heyman was typically diplomatic when asked about Emma’s potential retirement from the franchise by the
Daily Mail
: ‘It would be a hard thing to change and it would be disrupting. So, yes, I would love them all to see it through to the end. I adore them – I feel like an uncle or godfather – but ultimately they have to do what’s right for them. This is their lives.’
Equally typically, Rupert Grint was a little less diplomatic: ‘Emma doesn’t want to do it any more,’ he bluntly told the
News of the World
. ‘She’s tired of being known as “that girl from Harry Potter”.’
What’s more, Grint also blew a fairly large hole in the carefully maintained notion that he, Daniel and Emma were some kind of wizardly Three Musketeers, all for one and one for all. ‘Daniel and I are distant from her now,’ he was quoted as saying. ‘We don’t text or talk to her when we’re not filming.’
Daniel Radcliffe was more tactful: ‘It’s fair to say that Emma and me have had our moments, but when you are with someone for six years, and you see them practically
every day, there are bound to be moments when you just irritate each other.’
The public clearly liked holding on to the idea that the three young actors were constantly in each other’s company, palling around off set as well as on. Emma herself would later admit that this just wasn’t the case. ‘To be honest, we see so much of each other when we’re working that hanging out together would be overload,’ she said.
A spokesman for Warner Brothers managed to hide his irritation when the film company was asked about the future of the Potter series. ‘We’re extremely confident that Emma will be back for films six and seven,’ he said, a touch hopefully.
Emma clearly didn’t share his confidence. ‘I don’t know yet,’ she told the
Daily Mail
when asked about her plans. ‘Every film is such a huge production, and it’s a long time. Daniel and Rupert seem so sure. I love to perform, but there are so many things I love doing. Maybe that sounds ungrateful. I’ve been given such an amazing opportunity, but I’ll just have to go with the flow.’
David Heyman almost seemed to be preparing for the worst when asked if he could keep the team together. ‘In my dream world, we would have the same people for all seven,’ he told the BBC. ‘Whether that proves possible or not I don’t know. I think the series is strong enough to survive changes – look at Dumbledore. There may come a point when one of the kids moves on. I think the strength of Harry Potter would survive that.’
Emma would later admit there was a divide between her,
Daniel and Rupert on this issue. ‘Dan and Rupert have always been sure that they want to act,’ she later told Radio 4’s
Front Row
arts programme ‘Both of them would do 20 Harry Potter films if they were there to do.’
Stories about the reasons behind Emma’s non-signing began to swirl around the production, particularly as it was claimed there was a £2 million offer on the table for each subsequent film. ‘The wait for me to sign the contract was much more about the fact that mine was a bit more complicated than Dan or Rupert’s,’ Emma later explained to journalists when
Order of the Phoenix
was completed. ‘It just took a bit longer to work out in terms of scheduling and thinking about how I was going to do two more Harry Potter films as well as my AS and A levels and applying to university, because doing them alongside each other is no joke and you’ve really got to think it through.’
A deal was finally reached that reportedly involved her doing some filming in September, then taking a break to concentrate on her studies. She was also given every Monday morning off, again to prepare for her exams. If anyone had questioned how seriously she took her education, they were left in little doubt after negotiations were concluded: Emma had stood her ground – and won. ‘We are thrilled and proud that Daniel, Rupert and Emma have chosen to complete the arc of their characters in the final two films’ was the way Warner Brothers’ Jeff Robinoy put it when it was announced that all three young performers would be on board right to the end of the Potter franchise. ‘Through the years, we have
watched them grow into extraordinary young adults, as well as remarkable actors. It would be inconceivable to imagine anyone else in the roles with which they have become so identified.’
‘With Emma it was always, “Should I? Shouldn’t I?”’ observed producer David Heyman, when asked by the
Daily Telegraph
about the actress’s apparent struggle to commit to the end of the series. ‘She decided “Yes” each time, but it was, I suspect, a bit of a struggle for her. She wanted to cultivate a life beyond.’
Perhaps another reason for her hesitation was the unique way the Potter films were made. No film franchise had ever tried to pull such a young cast through a series of films over such a long period. What’s more, Emma and the other stars were signing up to a series in which none of the Potter performers had any idea how their story arcs would resolve themselves – only J. K. Rowling knew. ‘I don’t know, there’s this theory that she’s going to die,’ Emma told the IGN website when asked what she thought would become of Hermione Granger. ‘I really want to see her putting her intellect and her just naturally very caring nature to some very worthy cause. So I kind of want to see her in another country protesting for the rights of house elves or continuing with SPEW – or just generally making the world a better place. Hopefully, she’ll be married to Ron and have lots of beautiful babies. That’s the plan anyway.’
Filming for
Order of the Phoenix
was completed and the deals were in place for
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood
Prince
and the final instalment,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
. It had been quite a year: as well as completing yet another film, Emma had taken on the might of Warner Brothers and bested them. She had also moved up several notches in the reach and level of her fame. Despite insisting that ‘fame never interested’ her, Emma had stepped into another more sophisticated social world and was by now taking part in a dizzying array of events, ideas and projects that reflected the increasingly broad brand of fame that she now enjoyed: she’d been asked to contribute to a special play put on in celebration of the Queen’s 80th birthday called
The Queen’s Handbag
; she’d been voted Britain’s greatest female ambassador in a poll carried out by
Top of the Pops
magazine; she’d put her handprints, footprints and even wandprint into the pavement outside the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles; she’d become a fully fledged model, signed up by the Storm agency and had graced the front of
Tatler
and
Teen Vogue
, sporting top-of-the-range clothes by Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel and Chanel; and the whisper on the catwalk was that Emma was also being lined up as the new ‘face’ of Chanel. She was everywhere.
Her fame was now beyond that of a mere teenage actress. But fame was starting to have its price. ‘Yes, I do get stopped and sometimes it may be difficult to deal with,’ she said. ‘But I would much prefer to pay that price than not have any freedom. It’s normally just tourists who shout “Hermione!” and chase after me. I have been in town with friends and been chased down
the street and have had to hide in shops. Dixon’s is my favourite hiding place. I shouldn’t be telling you this because it won’t be my hiding place any more, but I go and hide behind the computers because that’s the last place they expect you to be.’
Emma’s friends were now a small hard-core of Oxford teenagers. Many of her contemporaries found that being her friend was actually more trouble than it was worth. ‘I’m not the girl they get the number 19 bus into town with to grab a coffee,’ she told
Daily Telegraph
. ‘I just get mobbed. It’s an uncomfortable experience for everyone. Sometimes I miss the fact that I have never really been a teenager because I have been Hermione for such a long time.’
Around this time, she also found that the attitude of some of her fellow pupils at Headington School had changed too. ‘It got harder as I got older,’ Emma revealed. ‘In the sixth form, there were a few girls who weren’t nice to me, but I had a good group of friends who I was with all the way through.’
But hassle from fellow sixth-formers would seem relatively mild compared with what happened next. In March 2007, a man in his twenties entered the grounds of Headington School, looking for Emma. Gaining access to the school timetable, he found out where she would be attending lectures and calmly sat in on them. No one seemed to notice – probably because the man wasn’t that much older than the students there – until he approached Emma after one of the open lessons and struck up a conversation. He started asking her a series of detailed
questions about Harry Potter. Realising she didn’t recognise him – and that it was a strange subject for a fellow student to raise – she alerted staff. The police were called, as were her parents, and the man was taken away. He was cautioned by the police and told to stay away from Emma and the school. She seemed to take the scare in her stride. ‘The stalker stuff was exaggerated,’ she later told
Tatler
. ‘To be honest, my friends were more freaked out than I was. I’m quite used to it. My friends were quite shocked at how blasé I was about it.’
It’s claimed that Emma was assigned personal protection to avoid a repeat of the incident, but she insisted that she had no plans to change the way she lived: ‘I live a really normal life … apart from around the release of the film. I try not to use chauffeured cars and bodyguards and things like that. I take public transport. I like being with my friends, people my own age. My family keep me really grounded. I have a really strong supportive family around me and that makes such a big difference.’
Any unease that existed about Emma’s safety at this time could not have been relieved by the steady stream of unusual gifts that the stranger end of the Potter fanbase began to send her. Bibles were their favoured gift. Emma had been receiving them from people who felt that the young actress was being led astray by the demonic nature of the films she was appearing in. ‘Please don’t send me any more bibles!’ she said. ‘I’m OK! I’m not crazy yet! I don’t know how I can really top bibles because that’s definitely the weirdest. I didn’t keep them all. I just kept one or two.
I gave the others away. Actually a Japanese fan sent me plasters for my cuts that I had in the third film, which I thought was very sweet.’
When
Order of the Phoenix
was released in July 2006, it was a mixed bag of a film – out went Quidditch matches and set-piece action sequences and in came brooding resentment and teen angst. Harry is a disenfranchised youth, battling Dementors in graffiti-splattered subways as the Ministry of Magic starts to interfere in the running of Hogwarts. With defensive magic cancelled thanks to torturer-in-a-twinset Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), the teenage pupils band together to defend themselves against the Dark Lord on behalf of their beloved headmaster Dumbledore. ‘
Order of the Phoenix
is a real turning point for Hermione and her friends as they finally begin to take a stance and organise themselves,’ Emma said on her website. ‘I love the way Hermione develops in this film. She is the one who instigates Dumbledore’s Army and she is so strong and fearless throughout even when finally battling with Bellatrix and the Death Eaters.’