Authors: David Nolan
‘At the time I was, like, “You’ve got to be kidding me,”’ she told
Newsround
. ‘You want me to run all the way down the Great Hall and throw my arms around Harry? I was, like, “No way – I’m not doing that.” I was so embarrassed. The only way I’ll do it is if you don’t do it in slow motion and you don’t put soppy music behind it.’
Try as he might, director Chris Columbus could only get Emma to give Daniel the briefest of embraces before she ran off to hide. Columbus said, ‘So, basically, she had all her friends, all the actors, actresses, and she had to hug him in front of 350 actors. As a kid, she was terrified. So she hugged him, and I had to extend it through editing. She would hug him, and, at the next frame, gone.’
But filming wasn’t all stressful for Emma. Robbie Coltrane could always be relied upon to keep her and the other cast members amused between takes. ‘There were 300 extras in the same room for one whole week. Everyone is dying of boredom and they need to be laughing. Robbie Coltrane stood up on the tables and danced. They did the
Macarena and the cancan – and it worked! It was the highlight of the whole filming! I never laughed so much in my life!’
The final day of filming was an emotional one for Chris Columbus: he had decided to step down as director after two films. By a quirk of scheduling, the final shot was with Emma, Rupert and Daniel, the three young performers he had helped to choose. ‘Nobody was sort of bawling and hugging; but it was the three kids and myself. We’d just done the library scene where Hermione finds the polyjuice potion. And I just realised that that was the last time the four of us would be working together in that capacity. So we just sort of walked off and talked a little bit. It was a sort of dry moment, and I kept undercutting it by saying, “We’re going to see each other again … it’s all going to be fine.” It was extremely emotional. You have to hold back the tears, because there’s a part of your life that’s been going on for three years that now is no longer going to be there.’
Emma for one would miss Columbus: ‘I don’t think I’d have been able to do it if I didn’t have a guy like him starting me off.’
On 25 October 2002, just as the publicity machine for
Chamber of Secrets
was gearing up, Richard Harris died. The veteran hellraiser had just turned 72. He had made 70 films over a 50-year career, but, to many younger cinemagoers, he would always be Albus Dumbledore. He’d been battling Hodgkin’s disease throughout the filming of
Chamber of Secrets
, but there was no question of another
actor taking over. Director Chris Columbus revealed shortly after Harris’s death that the actor was adamant that he could carry on. ‘He did threaten to kill me if I recast him; I can’t even repeat what he said to me. We’re all still in an incredible amount of shock. We knew Richard was sick but he was such a fighter that somehow deep down we all expected him to make it and get through it and be in the third Harry Potter film. So it’s a complete shock because we’ve all worked so closely together. It’s like losing a member of your family.’
‘He is Dumbledore in many people’s eyes,’ producer David Heyman told
ITV News
. ‘In truth he is irreplaceable. We will find a new Dumbledore but there will only be one Richard Harris.’
Harris himself, despite his outsized talent and personality, had been characteristically dismissive of his legacy. ‘I’m not interested in reputation or immortality, or things like that,’ he’d said shortly before he died. ‘I don’t care if I’m remembered. I don’t care if I’m not remembered. I don’t care why I’m remembered. I genuinely don’t care.’
His Harry Potter colleagues did care, though: Emma had lost her ‘perfect’ Dumbledore – it would be ‘very difficult’, she said, to carry on without him.
‘It was awful,’ Daniel Radcliffe, speaking on behalf of his young co-stars, said. ‘I have what I think is the kind of supreme, amazing honour of being able to say that I was in the last scene that he ever shot. I don’t think Richard is the kind of guy who would’ve wanted us to mourn over him. He would’ve wanted us to be happy and just remember him for all the times he made us smile and just laugh.’
Harris’s death cast a shadow over the film’s premiere on 3 November in London. The subsequent press coverage also centred on how markedly Emma and her co-stars had grown up since the first film. ‘Emma Watson looked every bit the sophisticated film star when she stepped out for the premiere of
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
,’ said the
Daily Mail
. ‘The gangly 11-year-old of last year had turned into a groomed, sleek young adult as she cast a spell on fans with her pink taffeta dress and strappy shoes at the star-studded event. Although she’s grown taller by several inches, Emma is keen to carry on in future versions of J. K. Rowling’s magical stories. “I just can’t wait to start filming the new film,” she said at the premiere. “I start in February or March.”
‘Emma is now a star thanks to the Harry Potter phenomenon but says she’s remained true to herself and hasn’t let her life change due to her success. “I get recognised, but you get used to that. There are worse things than being recognised,” she says.’
Emma, wearing a purple coat to protect her from the chill autumn air, answered the usual questions from journalists about how excited she was and who she would turn herself into if she had some polyjuice (‘Jennifer Aniston – so I could see if Brad Pitt was really that
good-looking
close up’). It was left to the grown-ups to answer the difficult questions. J. K. Rowling made an appearance – she was asked by reporters who would be the new Dumbledore. ‘He’s going to be very difficult to replace and I honestly don’t know if they’ve even thought about who yet.’
There were other changes in the world of Harry Potter movies, other things for journalists to ask awkward questions about – such as why Chris Columbus was walking away. The first film was already on its way to being the second most successful film of all time after James Cameron’s
Titanic
. To observers, it seemed crazy to walk away from such success. ‘It’s been two and a half years and I haven’t had dinner with my own children during the week,’ Columbus told reporters. ‘I just wanted to see them. I mean I get to work at six in the morning and then I come home at ten at night, and I really just wanted to take them to school in the morning and be there for them because ironically they’re the people who got me into the whole Harry Potter world, and now they’re the people who are getting me out of it. They’re not asking me to: I just made a decision. My son Brendan asked me, when I was almost finished shooting
Chamber of Secrets
, “Dad, are you going to do the third?” I said no, and he just gave me the strongest hug, like, “Thank you, thanks for coming home.” So it’s good. I’ve given a lot of time to these kids who are like my other family and now I need to give some to my other kids back home.’
The promotional machine shifted to America with premieres in New York on 13 November and Los Angeles the following day in preparation for the film opening on thousands of screens across the US. Emma hit the usual round of early shows and late shows to plug the film, along with Daniel and Rupert. She was a model of politeness as each of them was asked the same questions, and she feigned surprise as interviewers pulled out a Hermione
action figure for Emma to pass judgement on. ‘It was unbelievable seeing me as an action figure! In a few months, toddlers all around the country will be biting my head off!’ she said.
On
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
, she appeared alone, gamely playing along with the host’s attempts at an English accent. She told Leno her story about wanting to be a ‘queen, a fairy, a princess or a mattress’ when she was three. ‘At least I’ve achieved one,’ she told Leno.
Accompanied again by little brother Alex – who was becoming quite expert in acting as chaperone to his big sister for movie premieres – Emma was then whisked away from the
Tonight Show
studio by limousine and then helicopter to make it in time for the Los Angeles premiere in Westwood Village. Emma had to get used to a new level of fame. ‘I met Robin Williams when I was in New York,’ she told US chat-show host Wayne Brady. ‘He knew who I was! That’s very cool. I met Halle Berry and I completely couldn’t believe it when she said, “Oh my God, you’re Emma Watson!” and I said, “Oh my God, you’re Halle Berry!”’
It’s not difficult to make a case for
Chamber of Secrets
being a better film than
Philosopher’s
Stone
on almost every level. From the Weasley brothers’ daring rescue of Harry in a flying Ford Anglia and Dobby the house elf and his annoying overeagerness to please, to the spider attack in the Forbidden Forest and the superbly rendered Basilisk battle sequence at the climax, this is a family action film to savour. Columbus’s decision to do the scenes where the performers interact with the computer-generated imagery
(CGI) early on in the process pays off: Dobby seems totally
real
when he’s interacting with Harry in his bedroom at Privet Drive. Diagon Alley is brought to bustling life as Harry meets up again with Hermione – and Hermione once again fixes his glasses.
Emma is on top form as she stands up to Jason Isaacs’s Lucius Malfoy. He sneers at her Muggle (non-magical) parents and her eyes brim with tears after Draco Malfoy calls her a ‘filthy little mudblood’ (the term used for someone who has magical powers but is of Muggle parents). Hermione is indeed petrified, as in the book – an almost-convincing dummy stands in for Emma – and she’s off screen for 50 minutes, but the absence is made up for with that run through the Great Hall, ending in the hug that Chris Columbus found so hard to shoot.
But the acting honours surely go to Kenneth Branagh and his portrayal of Gilderoy Lockhart. He steals the show in a role that was at one stage earmarked for Hugh Grant. Whether he is unleashing a flock of Cornish pixies or turning Harry’s arm to jelly after a Quidditch match goes badly wrong, Branagh manages to make Lockhart foolish but not totally dislikeable. ‘I think there’s a kind of instant understanding that this guy is an idiot,’ Branagh told the
Examiner
. ‘Only an idiot could have that much confidence and that much lack of awareness. He’s in his own impregnable bubble of delicious narcissism. Several people mentioned that I was really sending myself up. There’s an implicit assumption that I’m an egomaniac.’
Meanwhile, several actors were being mentioned in connection with taking over the role of Albus Dumbledore,
among them Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen. Both actors would be associated in the public mind with the
Lord of the Rings
films, in many ways a rival franchise to the Potter series. It was even reported at the time that McKellen had at one stage accepted the role. ‘People say to me, don’t you wish you’d played Dumbledore?’ McKellen later told the
Guardian
. ‘I say no. I played Gandalf … The original. There was a question as to whether I might take over from Richard Harris, but, seeing as one of the last things he did publicly was say what a dreadful actor he thought I was, it would not have been appropriate for me to take over his part. It would have been unfair.’
There was even speculation that filmmakers were planning to use Harris’s on-set stand-in to shoot the scenes, with Harris’s face digitally added in post-production. The Internet gossipmongers would have to wait until the New Year to find out who would take over the role.
Reviewers tended to agree that the second instalment of the Potter franchise was a step in the right direction. ‘The news from Hogwarts?’ asked
Time Out
. ‘After many adventures our brave, clearly older young knight Harry slays the dragon. The franchise is safe! Columbus’s second alchemical movie ups the thrill quotient to satisfy the faithful. There’s more action, and it’s scarier.’
‘Darker and more dramatic,’ said
Variety
. ‘This account of Harry’s troubled second year at Hogwarts may be a bit overlong and unmodulated in pacing, but it possesses a confidence and intermittent flair that begins to give it a life of its own apart of the literary franchise, something the initial picture never achieved.’
The
Guardian
took the opportunity to flag up the changes apparent in the look of all the young stars, especially Emma. ‘Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione and Rupert Grint as Ron look distinctly older than they did the first time around,’ said their reviewer Peter Bradshaw. ‘Emma Watson continues on her well-made-up journey from baby to babe.’
Emma Watson, it would appear, was growing up.
D
espite her obvious adaptability, Emma couldn’t be educated on set permanently, so as she became a teenager she was enrolled at Oxford’s Headington School. Parents of day pupils can expect to pay £3,500 a term for their children to attend Headington – for full boarders it’s more than £7,000.
For Emma, school was the most normal aspect of her life, and, unlike many children of her age, she seemed to crave it. ‘I’m trying to do exactly what I do before I even started the films,’ she said. ‘Between films I always go back to school, I see all my friends, I play sport and I go to normal teenage parties. All of my money is locked away in a bank. I have good friends and family who keep my feet on the ground and keep it real.’
The all-girls Headington School was established in 1915 and former Headingtonians include newsreader Julia
Somerville and TV dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse. The school motto is ‘Fight the Good Fight of Faith’.
Each of the Potter kids would have his or her own fight to deal with in terms of schooldays. Emma admits she did face trouble from fellow pupils after her return to mainstream education, but seems to have dealt with it in a typically stoic, Watsonesque manner. ‘Going back to school is all right,’ she told
Newsround
. ‘I go to a very big school and some people give me a bit of stick. They walk past and go, “
Wingardium Leviosa
” [one of the famous spells in the Potter films] for the billionth time that day, and I go aagh! But apart from that most people are really nice about it. My close friends just treat me normally. They ask questions about it because they’re curious, but it’s OK. It’s funny mixing the two worlds, but I still do everything I used to do. I still play hockey and do all my sports.’
Daniel Radcliffe says he too was bullied, but the slightly built young actor used his growing confidence and sense of humour to avoid real trouble. ‘Because I’d been on set with some really genuine witty people over the last few years,’ he later explained to
Esquire
magazine, ‘I could turn round to these idiots and try to tear them apart. I’m not saying I was Oscar Wilde at 14, but I had a line for anything they could throw at me.’
Typically, the easy-going Rupert Grint seems to have floated over any such problems, despite seeming like a natural target with his flaming red hair. ‘My friends have been great – they treat me normally,’ he told CBBC. In fact, Grint’s only complaint seems to have been people at school
being too nice to him. ‘The teachers suck up, they really do. But other than that it’s been fine.’
‘I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t any difficulty at school,’ Emma told BBC Radio 4 in 2009. ‘Hey, it can be tough but I stuck it out. I always loved school. I think it was different for the boys – Rupert and Dan never really liked it. I weirdly did. But even if I wasn’t in a film, a bit of teasing and a bit of banter is just part of being at school. It’s normal and you have to learn to get on with it.’
The person who seemed to have suffered the most was Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton. ‘I would miss months of school and then return with bright-blond hair,’ he told
Heat
in 2010. ‘Needless to say, there was bullying. I wasn’t beaten up daily, but there was name-calling and jealousy. You have to bear in mind that Harry Potter wasn’t cool. I wasn’t part of the
Terminator
franchise.’
In February 2003, the team started work on the third film in the series.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
was the book Emma was reading when she got the part of Hermione. ‘It’s my absolute favourite of the books so far,’ she said. ‘Loving the third book so much is probably a bit selfish on my behalf because it is such a great part for Hermione. She really comes into her own in this novel. We get to see several different sides of Hermione.’
Daniel Radcliffe agreed. ‘This is my favourite of the books,’ he told
USA Today
. ‘It’s a weird one because it almost reinvents the character. He’s more hostile. He’s got a lot of teenage aggression, which all people at 13 do.’
The book had been published in July 1999 and J. K.
Rowling would describe it as the easiest book that she would write. The book marked the true globalisation of the Potter phenomenon. To promote it, Rowling went on a three-week coast-to-coast US promotional tour of signings, appearances and TV interviews. To dispel any final doubt about how far her creation had become ingrained in popular culture, in October 1999, Harry Potter made the cover of
Time
magazine. ‘I have a very weird life at the moment,’ Rowling told CBS News. ‘Half my life is exactly as it was in the past. I spend my time doing housework, looking after my daughter and writing novels. You could describe it as dull. Then suddenly I come to America and it’s wonderful. The number of people at the signings, the interviews and publicity is enough to make my head spin.’
With the new film, a very different kind of filmmaker was to be found in the director’s chair: Mexican born Alfonso Cuarón had taken over from Chris Columbus, who would take on a producer’s role for the new film. ‘My biggest concern in hiring a director was deciding who would bond with the kids,’ Columbus told the BBC. ‘This was a very special relationship we had over the past four years and I wanted to make absolutely certain that they would be in good hands. When I met Alfonso and I saw how he was interacting with the kids, from the very first moment I knew that they were in great hands.’
Cuarón had come to prominence with the 2001 film
Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother Too)
, a sexually charged road movie about two teenage boys and their encounter with a woman in her late twenties. ‘Obviously the tone of the movies is completely different,’ Cuarón told
USA Today
when asked to compare his best-known film with the new Potter.
‘Y Tu Mamá
was very realistic, with social observation. Here it’s a magic world, a fantasy, a bigger canvas. But emotionally it’s exactly the same thing. It’s a journey of a character seeking his identity and accepting who he is. To step out of the shadow of his father, for instance, is one of the themes. And, as in the non-magical world, the characters’ emotional lives have more intensity. The hormones are buzzing, and so is their anger about things. And rather than repressing those things, it’s about letting it flow. It’s not about encouraging it, but just letting it be … I didn’t want those emotions very polished. Sometimes they got carried away. I would let them. I didn’t want them to be neat. I wanted it a little raw.’
Y Tu Mamá También
proved, if nothing else, that Cuarón knew how to direct teenagers. J. K. Rowling said, ‘Alfonso was mentioned very early on, and I was really enthusiastic about the idea – and I loved
Y Tu Mamá También
. Alfonso just obviously understands teenage boys backwards.’
Indeed, producer David Heyman described Cuarón as a ‘teenager at heart’, making him the ideal choice to direct Emma and her two young co-stars. ‘Well, teenagers recognise other teenagers,’ the director told the BBC at the time. ‘From the moment I read the material, it was something that I connected with. This is the story of a kid who is seeking his identity as a teenager and I felt it was something I knew how to make into a film.’
In taking over from Columbus, Cuarón had his work cut out for him.
Chamber of Secrets
had earned £10 million in
its first weekend and another £55 million in its first three days across America. He clearly wanted to stamp his own authority on the new Potter movie but success was expected – on a large scale. Before filming started, he asked Emma, Daniel and Rupert to write an essay about their characters and about themselves to help him understand the essence of Hermione, Ron and Harry. The idea behind the essays, Emma told
Entertainment Weekly
, was ‘not just to help us, but to help him see the character through our eyes. He gave us a lot of freedom with that as well.’
‘The kids were very brave,’ Cuarón told
USA Today.
‘They bared their souls. They were very eloquent. At some point, I wanted to publish them, then I thought no. I promised them it was just for the work of the film and it’s their personal stuff.’
The end products of this exercise turned out to be highly reflective of the young actors, their personalities and the personalities of their characters. ‘We ended up being freakishly like our characters,’ said Radcliffe. Daniel wrote a nice, straightforward page. Rupert Grint forgot about it and never wrote a word. Typically, Emma – a
high-achieving
Watson – did nearly a dozen pages. Her co-stars would use this example of her eagerness to please as another way of teasing Emma – the number of pages she apparently wrote would increase with each retelling of the story. ‘It gets more and more every time,’ Emma exclaimed during a press interview when Radcliffe upped the number of pages she’d written to 20. ‘It was 10, then 12, then 16, now 20? Come on! I have big handwriting, and I leave big spaces, OK?’
‘These kids were starting to take themselves seriously as actors,’ enthused director Cuarón. ‘So they were willing to explore more emotional territories. I was so lucky that I had them so raw and so willing to go there.’
One of the places that Emma had to go was in bringing Hermione’s budding interest in Ron to the screen. ‘Hermione and Ron spend the whole film just arguing with each other,’ Emma said. ‘Ron is convinced Hermione’s cat has eaten his pet rat. Their squabbles are a bit of a
cover-up
. They actually have a bit of a soft spot for each other. It’s a classic love–hate relationship. You always tease the ones you fancy.’
Not everyone was quite so keen to see the first buds of romance between Hermione and Ron – Rupert Grint seemed faintly appalled by the prospect. ‘I hope it doesn’t happen,’ he told
Entertainment Weekly.
‘I hope Ron gets killed off before they actually do something.’
Some of Ron and Hermione’s onscreen interactions ended up on the cutting-room floor, including a moment where there was, as Watson put it, ‘an awkward hug between them. Alfonso kept the scene in where they hold hands for a moment when they are frightened so I know audiences will see what is developing between them. I think Alfonso and [writer] Steve Kloves did a really good job on adapting
Prisoner of Azkaban
. Even though a lot was cut, they did a great job of making sure the really important things made it into the film.’
One such really important moment was a sequence that would sometimes prompt a round of applause during screenings: the ‘foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach’
Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) getting his comeuppance at the hands of Hermione courtesy of a swift punch to the face. Alfonso Cuarón recalled, ‘Emma was looking forward to that moment, and I remember Tom telling Emma, “Oh, if you want to hit me, just hit me, just hit me.”’
‘I loved it – I loved every single second of it,’ Emma told
Teen Hollywood
. ‘Girl power – it was great! I would have done it for a whole week, but it was only a couple of takes. I went, “I want to do it again! I want to do it again!” It was great. It’s a great moment. It was cool.’
Not so cool for Felton. ‘Getting punched by Hermione – that one gets brought up a bit with me,’ he admitted during an interview with MTV. ‘A lot of street cred was lost on that film,’ he sighed.
As well as filming at Leavesden Studios, the Potter crew took in a wide variety of locations around the UK to create the look of the film. St Paul’s Cathedral in London and Virginia Water in Surrey were brought into play and the cast moved to the Highlands of Scotland for several weeks to film on purpose-built sets at Glencoe to bring Hagrid’s hut and Hogwarts’ Bridge to Nowhere to life. This was part of a deliberate attempt to highlight the ‘Scottishness’ of Potter in the third film. Although it’s not explicit, there was a general understanding that Hogwarts was north of the border, so it was right to use the dramatic scenery of the Highlands. Unfortunately, no one bothered to mention the equally dramatic weather. ‘Once we got to Scotland, it rained every day,’ producer Mark Radcliffe told the
Making of The Prisoner of Azkaban
documentary. ‘Literally the set would be washing out from under us. At
lunch we had to have a helicopter dropping gravel, and have the crew put the gravel back in to keep the dirt from washing away from under the set. Then we’d have to bring everybody back in to try to work.’
As if to emphasise the fact that she was growing up, Emma’s dressing-room door had a sign attached to it: ‘Beware – Babe Inside’. For a more literal example, look no further than what happened to Emma on set on 15 April 2003, as recalled by actor Chris Rankin, who plays Percy Weasley. ‘There was an apparent power cut in the middle of a huge piece of Emma’s dialogue during a Great Hall scene,’ he said in an interview with the BBC. ‘We all thought, What’s going on? And then 700 people burst into singing “Happy Birthday”. It was all very nice, but I think she got embarrassed by it all.’
Meanwhile, Warner Brothers announced that the role of Dumbledore had been filled by Michael Gambon. The Dublin-born actor had been knighted in 1998 and had a staggering CV of theatre, television and stage work stretching back to the mid-1960s. Despite this, Gambon admitted to nerves on the first day of shooting. ‘Having read the script, you get on set on the first morning, very frightened, and then I thought, How on earth am I going to play this part?’ he admitted to the BBC. ‘Then suddenly you get this feeling inside you, you’ve got the costume on, the wig, the beard, suddenly you’ve got long fingers like me, with gold rings, so the whole feeling and the image tells you how to play it.’
And Emma seemed happy with the choice. ‘Obviously it’s very hard to follow on from Richard Harris. He was
a perfect Dumbledore. Michael did a really great job instead of trying to make himself look exactly like Richard Harris or try to copy him. He did his own thing with it and he’s put a different spin on it. He’s a more mischievous Dumbledore.’
Gambon proved his mischievous credentials early on by gleefully announcing that he had never read any of the Potter books – and had no intention of ever doing so. ‘Well, I don’t see any point,’ he told
Empire
magazine. ‘I’ve got the scripts. People who have read the books get miserable because of all the bits that have been cut out. So I just read the script. That’s the best way. I just play him as myself. I don’t ease myself into any role really. I stick a beard on and play me. Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality. No real character actor, of course, just me.’