July 2009 | blackfilm.com | HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE | A Press Conference Interviews with Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)

July 2009

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE |Press Conference Interviews with Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)

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HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE
Press Conference Interviews with Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)
Posted by Samantha Friedman

July 9, 2009

Have you thought about whether you want to carry on acting or try something else?

Grint: I definitely want to continue acting. I really enjoy it. I don't know what else I'd really be doing if this didn't really come up. Hopefully after this there will be some stuff to do.

Radcliffe: I think certainly from my point of view I definitely want to go on acting for as long as I can for employment. To be honest, I'm never happier than when I'm on a film set. That's a long way to tell you that I want to keep working.

Watson: I'm going to university, but that doesn't mean that I'm giving up acting or anything dramatic like that. I feel like I do want to continue, definitely. I just want a normal experience for a bit. Just a little bit of normalcy for a while.

Radcliffe: It was very much exaggerated in the press recently, wasn't it.

Watson: I think the media found it confusing that I wanted to go to university and sort of don't really understand why I'm doing it. So I think they sort of jumped to that conclusion. I don't know. I'm very excited. I'm really looking forward to it. I've managed to juggle and balance studying and working well enough up to this point. So I don't see why I can't keep doing it. At university you get five months off on Holiday. The gaps are enormous. It's more than enough time to make one small 'Harry Potter' film but a couple of other films. So I think everything is possible. I'm being a bit selfish really. I'm trying to do everything.

Felton: I was always a little bit uncertain whether this was the path I was going to chose, but in the last year I've really got a passion for filmmaking. Not just acting, but everything that goes into it, the lighting, the sound recording and all the rest of it. So I'd certainly love to continue it for as long as I can.

Wright: It's the same for me. As the experience has gone I've kind of realized luckily that this is the career that I want to continue in and I'm going to also go to film school in September. I'm kind of interested in the wider elements, like directing and cinematography. I think this film has definitely been a big inspiration for me.

What film school?

Wright: I'm staying in London and going to film school at University Arts London, the main sort of art school.

How would you characterize working with David Yates compared to the other directors you've worked with on these films?

Radcliffe: I have nothing but great things to say about David. We get closer every year. We get on very, very well off set. We have a very, very good relationship, not only professionally, but personally as well. I think as we go on in the films we become more in tune with each other to the point where he can say cut and I will immediately know without having to see or ear, I will know whether what I've just done is what he wanted simply because I know what he's looking for in a performance. I think I do. I can't always get there, but he's always very good at being honest with me as well and just saying to me, 'You can be better than that.' That's a wonderful thing to have, that kind of trust and a relationship with a director.

Watson: David is great in the sense that he won't let you do anything other than the very best that you can produce. Sometimes that means being quite a hard task master. I think that David can tell whether I'm acting or not by looking at my back, genuinely. He's that scary. He just knows when you're really there and in the moment and trying and when you're not. A year ago he would say things to me, like, 'That was really great. A very good performance, but you're acting.' He won't settle for anything less than a truthful, honest performance that comes from somewhere that's really genuine for you. I've learned a lot from him. He's very generous with his time. If you want to talk something over he's more than willing to help you. He's very patient.

Grint: He's patient, yeah, which is quite a good thing to have really when you're working with me and Dan because we laugh a lot. It must get annoying. But he's great, such a lovely guy. He's my favorite that we've had. Definitely, yeah.

Radcliffe: I think also the thing with David is that even if he was shouting it would be very hard to tell. David is a very, very softly spoken man. So his manner is rather wonderful on set. You would never pick him out as the director. Nothing about him screams, 'I am the creative power house of this movie!' He's very, very quiet. What he has a director, as well which is brilliant, is the real ability to be able to see the entire storyline in his head in one frame almost and to be able to encapsulate it all in his mind at any given moment. So he can pick out moments from the end of the fifth film and find a relevance with them at the beginning of the seventh. He will find things, link moments constantly in the story. He's just got a fantastic vision of the films and from day one. Also, the other thing I would say very quickly before I bore you all with this craze is that his enthusiasm for being on 'Potter' is the same now as it was on the day one of the first one that he did with us.

Watson: He's like a kid in the candy store. He's just super excited by everything and to be doing what he's doing. Alfonso [Cuaron] and Mike [Newell] and Chris [Columbus] all look like they aged about ten years after one. But he just loves every second of it and there's just no ego with David. There's nothing.

Felton: He actually does that five year old thing where he gets a shot that he likes and does this. We know he's happy then. He's incredibly gentle natured and he certainly got me through this film.

How did you take Draco from cocky to vulnerable in this movie?

Felton: This links him with David, really. I was terrified before starting the film about approaching this in a whole new light. He was very two dimensional in previous years and I've yet to sort of take a new angle with it. David was very, very clear and concise with what he wanted, this sort of ghost like image would sort of glaze over his eyes constantly. He did some rehearsals with Michael and Alan and stuff which I was shitting myself massively before doing but he's like a father almost. He sort of made sure that it was all okay. So, certainly any praise that I get is down to his direction.

Radcliffe: I think for Tom to come in on this film having, if we're honest, not been asked to do a great deal in the last years, to come in and give the performance that you give in the sixth one is remarkable and fantastic.

Felton: You are too kind, sir, Thank You.

The underwater scene, Daniel, was that CGI or in a tank? Were those stunt people or animatronics holding onto you? Were you holding your breath or using a tank?

Radcliffe: No. I was holding my breath, certainly. To be honest, it was quite easy going, this particular underwaterscene in comparison to what we did on four where I was underwater for about forty one hours over the course of a month and twenty three minutes, but it doesn't matter. I didn't write it down on a log book or anything. That was very easy. I was only under maybe two days with the filming underwater. You guessed correctly. It was a stunt woman who was wrapping herself around me. It was actually one of the coolest moments of my career, bursting through the surface of the water being surrounded by this circle of fire.

Real fire?

Radcliffe: Real fire, yes. Real fire. Well, they have a little pipeline just underneath the surface of the water which shoots up bubbles of kerosene, or whatever, propane. Then they kind of ignite it just on the surface. So the surface of the water goes just black with soot and it's kind of horrible but it's also great fun. Then I get to climb up onto to the kind of central island where I look up and see Michael Gambon there looking like God or Moses, swirling fire high around his head. It was one of those moments where I will never, it does not matter how many more films I do, I will never have this scene or anything like ever again.

Are you guys happy with the way the next film is shaping up?

Radcliffe: I couldn't be happier, personally. I'm so excited about the seventh film. I don't know if anyone else has had the same experience as me over the last couple of days, but seeing the sixth film again we are doing something very, very different. We're not Hogwarts. The difference that makes is extraordinary.

Watson: Yeah. It's not very often that in the middle of filmmaking you stop and go, 'This is going to be awesome.' I've done that on a number of occasions. We've just done this amazing scene in the forest where I'm being chased by the snatchers. I've never done anything like it, nothing even close. I've never done any serious stunts or any real action. It's so exciting and just really dynamic. I think because all of us are finished with school and we're all just totally focused on this finale and it's out of Hogwarts and just about the three of us, it's just going to be…or well, I hope it's going to be brilliant. It feels totally different. I feel like I'm on a different film. The other films have this structure and it's like we come into the great hall and then we have this talk. There's a kind of structure that everything goes through and that's just kind of gone. It's going to be great.

How do you feel when J.K. Rowling visits the set and how much have you guys talked to her about your characters?

Felton: I haven't seen her for a while on set, but I had the pleasure of seeing her two nights ago at the London premiere. Obviously, as an actor, as a part of her project you want to hear what she's got to say. She was very complimentary about the whole film which is obviously the ultimate sort of honor at the end of it really, for her to be happy with the performances. I think that's truly great for us.

Radcliffe: Absolutely. She's always been very, very good at kind of letting go of the films and realizing that they're totally separate entities from the books. So she's not been too precious about anything. She realizes that things have to be cut in order to make them viewable. So she's always been very good and when she comes out to the set it's a pleasure. It's a rare treat because I don't think she wants us to feel that she's come kind of prying. She's always been wonderful and is an incredibly gracious and lovely woman.

Wright: The sense of trust she's given a lot of people, like all the people in the art department and costuming and just the whole idea of the visual aspects of the film, I think that shows that she really trusts the creative sort of affection that everyone seems to put into these films. There's never any kind of description left out at all. I think a lot of it is probably not kind of seen unfortunately in films.

Radcliffe: Just for the record it might be interesting to note that the only thing thus far, in six films, that has been onscreen which is not in the books that she said, 'I wish I thought of that –' was an idea that Alfonso Cuaron had on the third 'Potter' film to make the temperature drop when the dementos came by so that you would see the water freeze over. That's the only thing that she's gone, 'Oh, God. I wish I thought of that.' Just a little bit of 'Potter' trivia for you.

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