INTERVIEW: DAN RADCLIFFE, EMMA WATSON & RUPERT GRINT (HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE)

So here’s the second half of my adventures in Potterland, in which Harry, Ron and Hermione (aka Dan Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint) faced the press for their fourth time around – a scary thought, considering the first time they jumped on the promotional treadmill they were about 10 years old.

Anyway, here are three cool and down to earth kids talking about the rather excellent movie they just made…

What do you think about your characters growing up?

DR: You don’t mind if I start, do you? It’s great because there is so much pressure on the films now to get better and better and better and better, and especially after the third one, which for me was great. There was an awareness that we had to work really hard to go further with it, to make it better. Otherwise, people would be very disappointed I think. So, for me it’s also loads of fun playing Harry as he’s getting older because I think when we start Harry is 10, it’s his 10th birthday, and it’s almost as in real life, people sort of grow extra emotions, which is partly to do with hormones and all the trouble that they cause. And it’s partly just a thing about growing up. You have other assets to you, and it’s fun to play that in Harry as he grows older.

EW: There is also a lot of speculation as to whether we’re going to outgrow our parts, or that the films will take longer than we will. But actually it works out pretty well because each film takes about a year and obviously that goes right with us. While they’re at school, we’re pretty much growing alongside them and sometimes everything that we’re going through, in some cases they are too.

DR: Because there is always this thing of will you get too old for your part? But people are playing a lot younger than they actually are in real life. I don’t think it’s as big an issue as a lot of people are making it out to be.

What about the kissing scenes?

DR: You know what, that was really awful for me. No, that was great! It was fantastic, and I don’t know if Katie (Cheung, who plays Harry’s love interest) was in here, "God, I hated doing the hugging scenes with Dan," or something. But, for me it was great fun.

RG: So, what was the question?

DR: We have gone far off the topic…

RG:Yeah, I think it’s cool that the characters have grown. They’re more so the teenage sort of life. But Ron was a bit more moodier in this one. But yeah, there are a few arguments and I enjoyed doing all that.

DR: That was fun.

What are your luxuries, your favorite gadgets?

DR: Rupe, Gadgets?

RG: Yeah, I really do like gadgets. When I went to Japan last year, that’s a good place for them. I’m not sure about gadgets at the moment, but…

DR: What about the camera thing?

RG: Oh, yeah! When I was in Japan, there was this sort of spy camera and it was disguised as a cigarette box. And that was quite cool, I think.

DR: And we put it in the AD’s office.

EW: Probably my iPod. It comes with me everywhere. Everywhere.

DR: Umm… Well you see, I find the iPod thing hard, because I’m quite obsessive about CDs. And so I quite like to have the actual CD with the little sleeve notes and the back and the pictures. Which some may call sad. For me it’s mainly CDs, books and DVDs I suppose. I mean I haven’t changed much over the past five years, which obviously isn’t exciting. But that’s the honest answer.

The three of you are now a part of this global phenomenon and yet you’ve got such low-key profiles. Is that all going to change now that you’re real teenagers with hormones and everything? Are you going to be party animals?

EW: Hopefully not.

DR: Well, I’m planning on buying twenty Porsches and crashing them just for the extravagance. I think it’s quite a really good thing that we haven’t, because the characters are so well known and iconic, if we had been going out and if we’d gone to every party on the planet we’d been invited to, it would be hard for people to divorce what they see in the films from what they see in magazines. And I think that would have been a mistake. That’s why we basically only go to the premieres pretty much, right?

EW: Yeah and I think we do have a responsibility to that as well. I don’t think we are particularly party animals.

DR: Yeah, I certainly quite enjoy the "not having a high profile" thing. I quite like that. I sort of feel like I’m fooling people, because you know, it’s this massive thing and yet it’s still quite a low key thing, I feel like I’m tricking everyone.

Does everyone where you go to school know who you are?

EW: I started a new school two years ago and, at first, you do get some funny looks but after a while they just accept the fact that you’re there all the time, and I didn’t get treated any differently and that’s how I like it, so it worked out pretty well.

DR: Basically when you get back to school, as Emma said originally, it’s as if you’re sort of running along with an extra arm or something but then after a few weeks it sort of settles down, and then they just go, "Oh, there’s the kid with the extra arm". You know? It just doesn’t seem to affect everyone quite as much. It’s only every happened once really, when I was at school when the third film came out then it sort of hit fever pitch again, but I mean it’s not really a problem. Is it for you?

RG: Well I’ve finished school now so I don’t really get the same sort of recognition as that. But getting recognized is sort of weird anyway. I’m 17 now. You get the odd person sort of shouting out "Ron!" or something. And my hair at the moment sort of stands out a bit, can’t really avoid it. It’s not really a problem.

Each of you has issues with each other going on throughout the film. Rupert and Dan get to be at odds with each other and there’s tension with Emma and Rupert…

EW: I loved all the arguing, thought it was really juicy, it’s not these people that always get along perfectly and I think it’s much more realistic that they would argue and that there would be problems. So I thought it was great fun. And I think it makes up for quite a dark book; this one makes up for a lot of the humour, which is nice light relief.

DR: What’s quite nice actually about the thing that goes on between Harry and Ron in this one is that it’s funny to someone looking in on it, but to them it’s absolutely serious and they’re really angry at each other, and each of them feels that they’ve both behaved in a really bad way. They’ve been betrayed by them. It’s mutual blame; both to blame for how they’re acting but to someone else watching it’s quite funny because you sort of, in the long run, it’s actually quite trivial what they’re arguing about – as a lot of arguments are. They seem really important at the time and then two years later you can’t even remember where it started or what it’s about. As you said it does provide a lot of the humour, that and me dribbling orange juice.

EW: Oh yes, that was good. They both behaved rude.

DR: I enjoy doing that, sorry.

RG: Yeah I think its just them growing up.

I thought it’s easily the funniest of the Harry Potter films, but also the darkest. Was it difficult finding the balance or the tone, when you’re playing emotionally grueling stuff then quite light hearted?

EW: It’s difficult because there’s such a huge audience that’s children, you get kids being so into it, so part of the people who are making this film feel "Oh we don’t want to make it too scary, because we’re going to cut out this huge audience that are so passionate and love Harry Potter films." At the same time they want to be faithful to the book which is a darker book and I think they did a really good balance because I really do think it was the best way to go because from the very beginning it’s been "We’re going to stay faithful to what this is about and not about having huge audiences."

How about for you as actors? How did you find the balance?

DR: I think it wouldn’t have been so hard for us to adapt as Steve Kloves, who wrote the script. To adapt something as huge as the fourth book, is something I certainly wouldn’t envy that task. I mean he did an amazing job on it. To me the humour is actually essential to the darkness in a way. If you had that darkness running the whole way through the film you’d be tired and it wouldn’t be effective. What’s nice is that Mike lulls you, you’ve got that dark opening with the snake and caretaker being killed, but it then goes into this feeling that almost like the first film with the Quidditch World Cup, it’s wide-eyed and wonder that highlights the fact that suddenly they come out and everything is ablaze and everything is on fire – which means the same thing as ablaze, I don’t know why I said both. It’s more of a shock when you go into that darker world. I think the humour is essential to that.

EW: I don’t think Mike has ever held us back in any way, he really, really pushed us…to make it so real, how you would react in that situation. He really, really went there. And the other thing about Mike is that he really, really treats us like adults. He wasn’t taking any slack, he was expecting us to be professional the entire time where I think before in some ways, I don’t know…

DR: We could get away with more.

EW: Yeah, but he really took no excuses. He really pushed us which was really nice, to feel that there was a real challenge.

Emma in the Ball scene there is a magical moment when you stand at the top of the staircase. How many times did you have to shoot it and did you have input into your costume?

EW: That actually took a while. I didn’t know there were so many ways that you could walk down stairs until that day and it was difficult. It was hard work. Mike was giving me all these directions, "Keep your head up, make sure your back is straight, but don’t make it too frumpy, glide smoothly." By the time we did it I was an absolute wreck. But hopefully it looks OK and it’s up to that amazing transformation, which it is for Hermione. As for the costume, I had a bit of input, but I loved it so much anyway there’s nothing I really would’ve wanted to change about it. I mean Jany Temime, who is head of costume, created a truly magical dress, I mean it’s beautiful, beautiful and there were loads of fittings for it leading up to that scene. I think it’s looks great.

Did you get to keep it?

EW: No it’s upsetting I’d loved to have kept it, but no.

And Daniel, you got to swim?

DR: I got to swim. Not in a dress though, which would have been good. Yes. No, that was amazing. That was quite hard work actually because those days I could feel I call what I did "work". ‘Cause normally I think I’ve got this thing in my mind that work can’t be fun, ’cause I’ve always associated it with not enjoying yourself. So I’ve never really associated Harry Potter with work in that way. On those does it was tough, it was fun but it was hard. I trained for about six months beforehand and I’d go under and I was sharing someone else’s air from their SCUBA diving tank so we both had regulators and they’d say "three-two-one"; on the "three" I would blow out all the air in my lungs and then on "one" I’d take a very big gulp of air in and then it’s how much action you can do with that amount of breath in your body. SPOILER…The hard thing was not holding your breath, it was the fact that I wasn’t actually allowed to let any of the air out because Harry is supposed to become a fish with gills, so there’s not supposed to be bubbles going around…END SPOILER. So if I look at all pained…

EW: You know why.

DR: It was good fun and I have to point out I had the most amazing stunt team backing me up, who I trained with for six months. They were down in the tank with me, so they were fantastic.

Now that it’s been four films what’s the thought about whether acting is your long term life choice or don’t you know yet?

DR: Rupert…

RG: I’m really enjoying it at the moment, and doing all the Harry Potter films is really good experience and in the future…it’s not a bad job, so I’ll continue with it, definitely.

EW: I definitly wouldn’t want Harry Potter to be the last thing I do. Whether within this business, it turned out to be film or not. Originally what I used to love was being on a stage and reacting to a live audience and maybe my calling is more in theatre. But I don’t know. There are so many different things you can do within it. Definitely looking around and definitely interested.

DR: I just love doing it and I was trying to sort of work out the other day, what’s the attraction? Why do I love it so much? And I have no idea. The sort of conclusion I reached was that it’s a sort of power thing. Because you have a character and in many ways it’s up to you how that character is perceived by people who are watching the film. Obviously it’s not just up to you, it’s the script and direction as well. So I supposed that’s one of the things. I mean, I love doing it. Huge passion for acting. I’m also quite interested in maybe…I’m not even saying this will happen within the next twenty or thirty years but eventually…maybe directing or something like that. Simply because I’ve been so inspired by working with Chris Columbus and Alfonso and now Mike and having conversations with David Yates, who’s doing the fifth film and also talking to Gary Oldman, ’cause he directed a film, Nil by Mouth, which is a fantastic film, quite harrowing but it’s brilliant. I mean to talk to him about it, he just said "When you’re doing it, you’re creating all the time" which is something quite appealing to me. So that, a long way down the line perhaps.

Which scenes that you filmed that were cut would you have most liked to have seen in the final movie?

EW: Good question; difficult to say. I’m trying to think about what did get cut. When it’s all put together and you see the final thing, it all flows so well that you kind of forget what’s actually missing. I’m trying to think…

DR: Personally I was quite happy because all the bits I was worried about me being really bad in, they cut. Which was wonderful. What were some of the bits? There were niggling moments, one just before I went into the maze, there was another I thought I didn’t do as good as I could have done. And they weren’t in, which was fantastic. Which obviously meant I was right, that I hadn’t done as well as I could have done. I can’t actually think of any whole scenes that were cut. I’m sure with the amount we shoot there must be…

EW: A huge amount was cut.

DR: When you see the film it does seem so complete that…

EW: You don’t really miss it. It’s so good that I can’t remember anything that was cut, I can’t remember.

DR: God, we’re good.

Can you talk about the attention you get from the opposite sex at school, do you have boys chasing you everywhere?

DR: Me?

EW: I don’t really know how to answer that to be honest. Dan, you’re always good on this question, you take it.

DR: Do I have boys chasing after me? Um, I don’t, but to be honest, you’re talking about parallels in the film, there is a parallel in that both me and Harry are not very good with women. Um, I think I’ve got better now. I think any man who says he has never had an awkward moment with a girl, is a liar or he’s delusional because he’s sitting there thinking he is doing really well and the girl is thinking "Who is this man and why is he talking to me?" So I think that is probably the main parallel between me and Harry in this film. I would like to say that I’ve got huge amounts of attention, but I think there’s this sort of dividing thing between what people think they’re going to get when they see the film and then what the reality is. I think it’s slightly grimmer possibly.

Rupert, are you engaged?

RG: I’m pretty much the same as Dan, yeah, I think I’m probably very similar to Ron really, he is not very lucky and he has some bad experiences. (laughter)

DR: And the worst date in the world.

RG: Oh, yeah.

In real life?

DR: From experience. That’s what I like about Harry and Ron is that they are the worst dates in the world and these poor girls – Afshan, the girl who plays Padma, the girl who had the misfortune of going out with Ron – is one of my best friends and it was great because you just feel so sorry for them. This night could be the greatest night in the world for her, but it’s horrible, and then you have that little bit outside which is quite true of those kind of dances where you’ve got those ballroom casualties outside weeping because their night has been so horrible.

EW: Hermione included. I loved doing it so much because I could relate to what she was going through. I so know that frustration where guys can just be so insensitive. I can relate to a lot of things she experiences and all of her awkward moments and feelings. What’s really sweet, I think, about the relationship that Hermione and Viktor have, and the one that Mike really wants to play to, is that Hermione is so insecure about herself. She’s never really had any attention from any guy before, that when she sees Viktor looking at her she thinks "Is that guy really looking at me?" and he genuinely wanted her to come across as quite literally being swept of her feet, she doesn’t know what is happening to her and she gets caught up in this whirlwind with this incredibly famous Quidditch player and she can’t believe that it is happening to her. It is quite an emotional roller coaster for her.

If you were a bit older, which of the more mature roles in the series would you like to have played?

DR: Sirius, probably. Mainly because Gary Oldman played him and I think he is one of the most brilliant actors. I might have gone for a bit of an obvious one there, because Sirius is very similar to Harry and what would have been fascinating if I would have played Sirius, and will be when I’m doing Harry in the fifth film, is that there are two relationships that are based on a mutual need for someone that is gone. So me and Sirius, we like each other, but it’s partly based on the fact that we both miss James (Harry’s father) and he’s clinging onto James through me and I’m trying to get to know my father through him. SPOILER…And the same thing happens with me and Cho Chang in the fifth film, where I was the last person there when her boyfriend, Cedric, got killed…END SPOILER. It would have been nice to get to know Harry from another angle, so maybe when they remake the film in fifty years I’ll be lining up.

EW: Rita Skeeter, because she’s so deliciously evil. She is just such a personality, she’d be so much fun to play because she’s funny, but she was something that is very real about her and her costume is fantastic.

There’s something very real about her?

RG: We’re in a room full of journalists.

EW: Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say? I’m going to backtrack, um, yeah, but…

DR: What Emma meant to say is that…people have a malevolent side to them.

EW: They can!

DR: But none of you!

EW: None of you, not anyone in here!

Rupert?

RG: Uh yeah, I’d be Hagrid. He’s pretty cool, yeah. I’d probably be him, I don’t know why. He’s tall. Yeah, he’s tall. That’s one reason.

Could you go through who your favorite actors are that are not in the film and each of your favorite bands or musicians?

DR: Rupert, you want to go first?

RG: I’m inclined to comedy films really, when I was young I really liked Jim Carrey. I quite liked Dumb & Dumber, and Mike Myers as well. I liked Shrek.

DR: Music?

RG: Music, yeah. I’m into sort of rock. AC/DC are quite cool, yeah.

EW: This question is a killer! I hate it…

DR: Look what you’ve done!

EW: Umm, there are so many people that I’ve never had one person that I’ve particularly idolised or I thought "Wow, I want to be just like them". It used to be when I was younger, Julia Roberts, I used to just love her. There is something so appealing about her. More recently I’ve loved Natalie Portman, not just on screen but how she’s handled herself. I think she’s done a really good job. I love people like Renée Zellweger who aren’t afraid to look unattractive and really put themselves into a character role and to really be an actress instead of just thinking "Am I on-screen pouting and looking beautiful?" because that’s not really what it’s about. Nicole Kidman has had a fantastic career and she’s done loads of different things. I could go on forever.

Um, OK, music. Again this is really difficult, I like so many different things I have had so many music influences in my life. My dad has had a lot of influence on that, he got me into Eric Clapton, BB King, and loads of stuff like that and then my mum, Pretenders, Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, stuff like that. I’m really into hip hop at the moment. I love Damian Rice. I just love music generally. If you come to my house I always have music playing.

DR: In a way, it’s quite hard to think of actors that we want to work with that we haven’t. We’ve been incredibly lucky. I’ve worked with some of the best British actors of their generation, Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Gambon and the people we’ve worked with, it’s insane. Other actors I’d like to work with. Natalie Portman, you mentioned, who’s amazing. And beautiful, which is always important if you’re going to work with someone. There’s a German actor who I think is absolutely amazing, I don’t know if it would ever work, is Daniel Brühl who was in The Edukators and Goodbye Lenin as well, and he’s amazing. When Alfonso did Y Tú Mamá También, Gael García Bernal is amazing. I mean… come on now, think of someone who speaks English. To be honest, I would like to have worked with Peter Sellers, because when people talk about classic British actors, you talk about Lawrence Olivier, and Peter Sellers was just in the most amazing films. Being There, Dr Strangelove…he played four parts in that one? Three? So he’s just amazing.

But with music, that comes easier to me. Which is possibly not the right way around. I got an album the other day, by a band called We Are Scientists, a band called… Yes, good! It’s so rare that my taste gets recognition from someone. That’s a very special moment. Fantastic! The Rakes, Dogs, Hard-Fi, What else…the new Franz Ferdinand album is extraordinary. They all sound kind of indie, but I also like more orchestral…hands up if you’ve heard of a band called Godspeed You Black Emperor? YES! Fantastic. Brilliant. And also, my dad has got me into David Bowie and T-Rex and stuff like that. Electric Warrior, what a brilliant album! But also, when we were in San Francisco he bought Melanie’s Greatest Hits. It’s BRILLIANT! Absolutely fantastic! There’s this one song called "Look What They’ve Done To My Song, Ma"…it’s fantastic! So those are probably some of the ones at this moment.

What memory will you carry away from this film?

DR: Seeing it, probably. When you see eleven months of your life and you go in everyday and you do it, it’s very particular with Harry Potter, it’s a very gradual process. And you piece it together day by day and you refine and refine and refine and go through all the different stages and there are fifteen minutes of credits. Thousands of people work on it, all of whose work is as important as the last. And then it amounts to this massive thing at the end of it, which is just amazing and it is a fantastic thing to see because even if we hadn’t – I mean I believe we’ve made a great film, a really good film – even if we hadn’t, the sense of achievement would be still be this amazing thing.

EW: My answer is quite similar to Dan’s. You’d kind of think that working on something for the five years I’ve been doing this for, the novelty would start to wear off and it would get a bit boring, and probably start to get complacent and want to move on and stuff, but a couple weeks back the trailer was shown for the first time on ITV news. And I remember coming in to the kitchen and it said that it was going to play in five minutes. And I literally filled with excitement all over again about the fact that I was part of this and that I was in it. I could be excited about that, there was all this talking again and I was going to see it soon and all the waiting. And, when I saw it I was literally just like, "Oh!" I was so excited again. And there’s a huge wait. A killer wait. You worked on the film for eleven months and you have to wait six months to see it. It’s painful. You just want to know what it looks like.

RG: I find it hard to actually remember anything really, from a long time ago. I’d have to say seeing it, yeah.

DR: It’s far too early to be reminiscing though, I think.

What is the one impression of this film that you wish that the viewers would take away that perhaps they didn’t get from the first three films?

DR: I think this film, I think the main theme of the entire film, sort of like the story arc, I think it comes across more in this film than the last one, is the whole series is about a loss of innocence. If you go with the first one it’s all very wide-eyed and almost naive. You know, he is quite naive and thinking because it is a magical world it’s going to be better than the world that he has come from. Where in actual fact, it’s not. There are further extremes. It can have extremes of joy which possibly are more than in the normal human world, but also the depths that man can sink to and people like Voldemort, and I think in this film he starts to wake up to that fact even more than last time. He comes to the realization that if he’s going to make it in life, he’s going to be making it alone. And, I think that’s the main thing that he discovers in this film and hopefully people will realize that about me. That I’m not out wreaking havoc!

After all these years I am sure that you are incredibly invested in these characters. JK Rowling is writing the seventh book now, the final book. If there was something you could say to her that you either really want to happen or really don’t want to happen before this series is finished what would it be?

DR: If Quidditch isn’t absolutely necessary, maybe don’t make it so…I read in an interview with her a while ago, she said something like it has become quite a chore writing Quidditch. It’s quite tough to film! It’s tough on both of us. No one is benefiting! Then again, it’s also incredibly exciting for people to watch. So, there is that as well.

EW: I’m going to make Rupert really uncomfortable now. For goodness sake! Hermione and Ron just need to get it together! This has been going on for so long now! They’re so wrong, but they’re so right. It just needs to happen and they just need to get on with it. Yeah, if that doesn’t happen I am going to be really frustrated. Oh God! It’s still ongoing. So, hopefully they will end up together.

RG: I was actually looking forward to Quidditch, really. So you’ve sort of ruined it for me.

You said on this film Mike Newell treated you as adults, and perhaps that hadn’t been the case before? How did that manifest itself?

EW: Alfonso put a lot of trust in us and it was so nice that he really wanted to hear what we had to say and what we thought, but Mike kind of took it to a new level. I would be learning something really difficult and just say, "I can’t get this right! Just tell me what you want me to do! Just tell me how you want this to be because I’m going crazy!" And he would just say, "I can’t tell you how to do it. I’m not going to tell you how to do it. Just think about it." I mean it was just nice that while he guided us really well, we felt a responsibility for ourselves, for our role, for how we came across. He left a lot of trust in us to do that and it was really, really nice.

DR: I mean I suppose sort of the main thing that I got out of Mike’s direction was that we’re now old enough to appreciate scenes being analyzed and broken down. The fact is there is such a rigorous process of drafting the scripts on Harry Potter, on all films, but Harry Potter, you know, we must go through about seven before we get to the one, before we start shooting them. So basically by that time, if it’s in the script it pushes the story forward and it advances things and it is there for a reason, and Mike was fantastic about going into detail.

I remember the first time we were rehearsing with Mike. It was me and Matt Lewis. The boy who plays Neville, who is fantastic. He’s just the greatest guy and we were doing a scene and, on the page, the scene was around an inch and a half long, and we spent an hour and a quarter rehearsing it and going through… and we were going like, "Mike if this is how long an inch and a half of script takes, how long will it take when we get to the twelve page things with Voldemort?" We were sort of slightly apprehensive about how we were going to be pushed, but it was very exciting. He realized that we are now old enough to appreciate really going into detail about the scenes. And, I think that was probably the main thing that changed in this film.

RG: Yeah. The same really. Well, actually I’ve finished school now, so for me it feels like I’m sort of grown up a bit more now anyway. Mike was great. He was really into your own sort of input.

Now that you’ve played these characters for over four films, do you feel a connection to them like twins or best friends? And, are you excited about doing the rest of the films, the rest of the books?

DR: Em, do you want to go first?

EW: I am hugely attached to Hermione’s character because…I’ve denied this part for four years, I know any of you who interviewed me earlier on know…that there is so much of me that goes into her, as far as my experiences and the things that Mike did. He really made me think about that while I was acting. I was kind of regurgitating my own experiences. Applying them to what Hermione’s going through. So, I know if anybody else played Hermione, it would actually kill me. I wouldn’t be able to deal with that at all. I’d go after her.

DR: A threat to any future Hermiones out there.

EW: Yeah. Watch out!

DR: You’re absolutely right. He did make us draw upon our experiences. I certainly can’t help but feel attached to him in some ways. I don’t know about twins. In a way, I don’t know if me playing him has turned out how much I am like him now or being so close to him over five years has influenced my own character. I haven’t developed a complex over it or anything, but it is sort of an interesting thing. It’s very hard to separate yourself from him in some ways, but ultimately you go home at night and it’s not like you stay in character all the time. It would be very hard to be a method actor on Harry Potter because then you’d have to try to find a figure of ultimate evil somewhere. So, that would be my not particularly clear answer to that question.

Oh, the other part. Yes, sorry. I think it comes down to the fact of "Are we still all enjoying it?" If we are, I think it would be sort of stupid not to. If the script is good and it’s a challenge and it’s an interesting director, as long as… I mean I’m going to speak for myself. I’m not going to speak for everyone here. You know, I don’t want to put words in everyone’s mouth. But, I would feel as long as I am doing sort of enough other stuff. Also, I sort of try to read the books when they come out very impartially and not make up my mind. But, the fact is when I was reading the sixth book and I was going like, "Oh God, I would love to do that." It was so good.

Do you get the books earlier than the rest of us?

DR: No. No, we don’t.

EW: No, no.

DR: I tell my friends I do. I tell my friends I do and then make up the stories, but I don’t actually get them. No.

RG: Yeah. Well, since the beginning I always felt like I could sort of relate to Ron in a way. We’re both ginger, and we both have sort of big families. I’ve obviously been playing him for a long time. So, I got to know him. I’m really looking forward to the next films. So, yeah. Definitely.

EW: It’s really difficult when people ask these questions because it is such a huge commitment, and you can’t appreciate how much unless you’re on it, the amount of time everything takes. An eleven-month film is huge and it’s not just a little bit every day. It is a full day. We work adult hours. So, I think I would never want to do it if I felt I wasn’t going to give it 100%. I’m so focused on this one now. I’m so excited about this film now. I’m really not thinking about anything in the future. You have to take it one at a time otherwise you just get a bit overwhelmed, I think.

DR: I’m not in any way trying to undermine…just in case we get prosecuted, we don’t actually work full adult hours. We work very long hours. I think what makes it hard is that a lot of actors act like that. That’s the thing. When actors aren’t filming they just go to their dressing rooms and relax. Whereas, we go into school…

EW: More work!

DR: Phew!