Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard

Director Chris Columbus brings the best out in his child actors by fostering a fun and relaxed environment and by creating shots that organically elicit the desired expressions and reactions from the children. For example, the young actors are kept away from the Great Hall set entirely until the cameras are rolling and can capture their authentic expressions of awe and wonder. Likewise, Felton is encouraged by Columbus’s quirky praise of his haughty sneers (“Ooh, you bastard!”), and such playful exclamations help him to understand when he is acting the part of Draco Malfoy effectively (87).

Chris Carreras, the first assistant director, disciplines the children whenever their silliness gets out of hand and disrupts the film’s progress. On one occasion, Felton gets in trouble for jumping on a cup to crush it while they are filming the King’s Cross station scene, not realizing that it is filled with hot chocolate. As a result, he soaks all those around him with chocolate, creating a need for multiple costume repairs. During his time on set, Felton also struggles with the rule against doing anything risky; the movie team doesn’t want to recast injured children or cover up scratches and scrapes. One day, Felton’s friend throws a phone at him, which hits him in the forehead and creates a huge lump that affects filming for the next few days. A variety of other antics ensue. Along with Alfie Enoch, who plays the role of Dean Thomas, Felton skateboards down a hill and gets in trouble. On a different occasion, Felton joins Jamie and Josh, the actors of Crabbe and Goyle, in firing a blank-firing pistol in an empty car park and running away, terrified of being caught.

At six o’clock each morning, Felton’s driver Jimmy, picks him up and takes him to Studio 5. He then collects his sides—the running sheet for the day and his lines—and goes to his dressing room to change into his required costume before proceeding to hair and makeup. Often, if filming is running behind, the actors get dressed and prepared for nothing. The time of all the child actors was carefully monitored, as they needed to have at least three hours of tutoring per day and could not be on set for more than three hours.

Felton learns that the children who come on tours through the set (usually organized through charities) want to see the actors performing as their well-known characters and are therefore confused when “Draco Malfoy” is polite and effusive. Felton learns the importance of staying in character from the masterful example of Alan Rickman, who gives the delighted children a good show by slipping into the mannerisms of the terrifying Professor Snape: his role in the films.

At the film’s premier, Felton is surprised when a boy angrily tells him that he is a “real dick” (107), but Felton’s grandfather assures him that this just means that he played his part perfectly. At another premiere in America, an angry woman accosts Felton for being “such an asshole to Harry” (108), and Felton is justifiably shocked that some people seem unable to separate reality from the world of Harry Potter. However, he learns to interpret such aggressive statements as a compliment for his success in his role.

His induction into the world of fame continues when a girl at a Comic Con convention looks crestfallen when he answers a question about flying on a broomstick with the filming experience of sitting on a bike seat strapped to a broomstick in a greenroom. Rather than revealing all the tricks of the trade, he learns instead to lean into the magic and tells fans that they will experience it themselves when they get their Hogwarts letter upon turning 11. Additionally, Felton is flattered by the fan mail but struggles to read through it all, especially when he receives some unusual letters, such as the strange invitation from an American man who has changed his name to Lucius Malfoy and wants Felton to live with him. In another example of the intense reactions of certain fans, a woman starts stalking Felton to many events and seems to know his schedule in advance; he is disconcerted by this but also flattered when she waits for hours to give him a condolence card after his dog dies.

During the filming of the broomstick scenes, many challenges arise. One scene in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as it is known in the United States) is complicated by wasps swarming around his thickly gelled hair. Felton also recalls workers manning sea-saws to control the movement of each student’s broomstick in a scene about flying lessons. For full-fledged flying scenes, the actors have to sit in a greenroom and look at various tennis balls, producing the appropriate facial expressions to match the action in the film, and Felton and the others find this part of the filming process tedious.

Like Felton, the other young actors want to do stunts themselves, but this task usually falls to stunt people instead. David Holmes, known as Holmesey to the crew, does the stunts for Daniel Radcliffe (the actor who plays the role of Harry Potter) as well as for Felton. During the filming of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Holmesey is badly injured when a stunt goes wrong; he is rushed to the hospital but has paralysis from the waist down, with limited use of his arms. Years later, the cast and crew still have an annual “Slytherin versus Gryffindor” cricket match to raise money for the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital.

During the drawn-out filming process, Felton’s filming schedule leads him to miss every second week of school. Whenever he is present at school, he is often branded as “the Harry Potter wanker” or the “Broomstick Prick” by his peers (126). He is also embarrassed by his bleached blonde hair. He acts up at school in an attempt to achieve some sense of normality, and he is often disrespectful to the teachers.

Late one night, Felton and three friends go on a fishing adventure at a local pond. A large group of older boys arrives, and Felton’s three friends run. Felton is left with the threatening boys, who burn his face with their cigarettes. In this moment, he feels an undercurrent of building violence and is terrified. Fortunately, Felton’s brother Chris coincidentally arrives, and the group leaves Felton alone. From this experience, Felton learns to develop a sense for when he is about to be recognized and when a situation is about to take a sinister turn.

In one scene, the child actors all have live animals on their desks for a scene depicting a Transfiguration class, and this situation creates instant mayhem. A baboon in the corner of the classroom continues to masturbate, and Felton and his friends cannot stop laughing at the millipede that repeatedly rolls down one child’s sloping desk.

The crew becomes increasingly exasperated as the filming continually needs to be cut due to the boys’ giggling. The boys are threatened with being removed from the filming and are issued “red cards” as a discipline measure, but they still cannot stop laughing every time the camera rolls. In the end, the scene must be filmed without animals. Felton apologizes to Dame Maggie Smith, the actor of Professor McGonagall, for his poor behavior, and she is kind and gracious. One day, a group of actors and crew members trick Felton into believing that he will have to run naked in a scene; they even produce a see-through thong. He is relieved when he realizes that they were tricking him.

Felton states that his own celebrity status cannot compare to that of his close friend Emma Watson, who plays the role of Hermione in the Harry Potter films and who, as a young woman, has often struggled with her celebrity status. During the filming of the first movies, Emma invites the young Felton, as well as Jamie and Josh (the actors who play Crabbe and Goyle, respectively) to see a dance she has prepared, and the boys (who are a few years older) giggle and roll their eyes throughout her performance. However, he also encourages her in difficult moments. For example, during the filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, she is taken aback by fans’ effusive responses to her, and Felton urges her to take a moment to interact with them, accompanying her as she does so.

Felton and Watson have a special relationship right from the start; they understand each other, and each feels that they are kindred spirits in a platonic sense. The narrative relates that when the young Felton suggests that they practice the slap scene (in which Hermione hits Draco Malfoy), she misunderstands his intention that she do a stage-slap and instead slaps him full in the face. Felton acts as if he expected this to happen and pretends that it doesn’t hurt.