17

THE WEASLEBEES AT WORK

or

GOLFING WITH GRYFFINDORKS

There were times when we kids were shepherded back and forth from set in a big bus. Imagine a regular, rowdy school trip, except the passengers are decked out not in their school uniform, but in wizard robes and wands. I’m thirteen years old and some of my Harry Potter wages have purchased me a portable CD player and a Limp Bizkit CD. I’m sitting on the bus next to Rupert Grint, their track “Break Stuff” blaring over my headphones.

Maybe you know Limp Bizkit. If so, you might reasonably be of the opinion that it’s not completely suitable for thirteen-year-olds. The themes are adult, the language is fruity. It was right up my street. I glanced to my right, where Rupert was quietly minding his own business. It occurred to me that I might be able to get him to break out into a full-blown Ron Weasley expression of bemused astonishment. So I took off my headphones and put them over his ears. His brow furrowed. His eyes widened. And as he heard the full wallop of Limp Bizkit’s lyrics, that classic Ron expression spread over his face. You know the one. I might as well have dropped a spider in his lap.

When I remember that incident, I’m reminded of two truths. One is that there was a reason why most of the chaperoning mums had a moment or two when I was not their favourite person. Remember the skateboard? Remember the Red Bull? I was, I think, an occasionally disruptive influence on some of the younger kids, whether by distributing sweets or exposing their sons and daughters to the more explicit side of American rap music. The other is that the actors who played the Weasleys were everything that you wanted them to be in real life: funny, kind and laid-back. And none more so than Rupert.

I had, of course, met Mark Williams, who played Mr. Weasley, when I was filming The Borrowers. On Potter, we rarely saw each other. Our scenes tended not to coincide, so my contact with him was limited to premieres and press junkets. But those early memories I have of him, pre-Potter, recall an actor who was forever larking about. He was relaxed on set and keen to make everyone around him feel similarly relaxed. He always seemed to be the first to acknowledge that we were not doing anything particularly important—we were just making films—so it was okay to have fun in the process.

Mark was the perfect counterfoil for Julie Walters, who played Mrs. Weasley (much to my mum’s excitement). While she was the queen of kindness on set, she also had a mischievous sense of humour and she and Mark were forever mucking around. They were both warm and incredibly down-to-earth. They were, in short, the perfect Weasleys. I’m sure they were a good part of the reason why Rupert, along with James and Ollie Phelps who played Fred and George, had such a sense of fun on set. When the Weasleys were together, they were always relaxed and having a good time.

On screen, Rupert and I were bitter enemies. Off screen I had, and have, nothing but love for the Ginger Ninja. It was almost impossible not to feel that way. From the very beginning he was always completely hilarious. This is the guy who got the part after sending in a video of himself rapping the immortal line “Hello there, my name is Rupert Grint, I hope you like this and don’t think I stink.” He was, unsurprisingly, extremely Ron-like. He was incredibly cheeky, with a habit of blurting out vaguely inappropriate comments that most people would have suppressed. He had a massive—and quite expensive—problem with laughing on set, thanks to Chris Columbus’s red card system that cost him several thousand pounds. Corpsing on set is an occupational hazard for actors, especially young ones. All it takes is for somebody to say the wrong thing or to catch your eye in a certain way, and it doesn’t matter how many stern words you receive, or how many legendary actors you are working with, it’s almost impossible not to dissolve into fits of laughter each time the cameras start to turn. Of all of us, Rupert was by far the most susceptible to that.

Rupert always seemed entirely unbothered by anything. Despite all the pressures he’s been under from day one of Potter, I’ve never heard him complain or appear to be even slightly pissed off with the occasional downsides of being in the public eye. He’s just a good, sweet-natured person, seemingly able to take anything and everything in his stride. He’s much less “starry” than you might imagine an actor of his profile to be. And although the characters we played despised each other, off set I always felt we had a good deal in common. We both did the same thing with our wages: we enjoyed them, wholeheartedly. Go to either of our houses and you’ll find crazy trinkets galore. I bought a dog, he bought a llama. Two, actually, which in a couple of years turned into sixteen (llamas mate enthusiastically, apparently). He bought a nice set of wheels, just as I did. But whereas I got myself a soft-top Beamer (roof down even in near-freezing conditions), he fulfilled a childhood ambition to be an ice-cream man by quietly spending his hard-earned on a fully loaded ice-cream van, which he spontaneously turned up to work in and started giving out free ice creams. He even used to drive round sleepy villages distributing ice creams to kids astonished at being handed a 99 by Ron Weasley in the flesh. It was crazy, but somehow entirely characteristic of Rupert. Despite everything, he didn’t know how to be anything but himself.

Everyone changes a little as they grow up. As we were making the later films, Rupert became a little quieter and his playfulness became a little more reserved. But he never lost his authenticity or his gentle, genuine nature. And in later years, of all the friends I made on the set of Harry Potter, he’s the one who has shared my passion for certain projects. For a number of Christmases now I’ve headed off to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London to hand out presents to the kids who find themselves in hospital over the festive period. I start the day by going to Hamleys toy shop (yes, the one I used to go to after auditions with my mum) and do my best to blag as much Potter merchandise as possible. Then off to the hospital with a Santa sack full of toys. On one occasion, I texted Rupert the night before to ask him if he’d come along with me. It sounds like a small thing—it is a small thing compared to what some of those kids in hospital have to go through—but I was very aware that for Daniel, Emma and Rupert, more so even than for the rest of us, the question of charity work is a difficult one. We have the ability to help people simply by turning up. Sometimes, we don’t even have to turn up at all. Daniel, for example, can sign ten photos and make thousands of pounds for a charity overnight. So while most people have a very good reason why they might not want to devote big chunks of precious spare time to charitable causes, our reasons are less convincing. It is, of course, a quiet privilege to do what we can for those less fortunate than we are, but that privilege comes with an uncomfortable question. Where do you draw the line? Where do you stop? There’s no shortage of people in need of help and it would be easy to beat yourself up for not doing more. Like all of us, Rupert does what he can to leverage his profile for good causes, but it would have been quite understandable if my last-minute request for Great Ormond Street had been one request too many (not least because I know how it crushes him to see children who are not well). But, ever enthusiastic, he turned up the next day with his partner. No management team, no driver, no fuss: just modest, nonchalant Rupert, happy to give his time to brighten the days of some kids whose days sorely needed brightening.

That’s Rupert in a nutshell: quirky, cheeky, thoughtful, reliable, kind—and a good guy to know if you fancy an ice cream.

Fred and George Weasley were played by the Phelps twins, James and Ollie. They’re a couple of years older than me, so there was no chance of shocking them with a blast of gangster rap. It took me almost a decade to work out which was which and I certainly never risked calling them by their names, in case I got it wrong. But although we didn’t find ourselves in many scenes together, we developed a friendship that endures to this day. Both are as warm and funny as their characters.

Give Fred and George an inch of fun and they’ll take a mile of it. James and Ollie shared this trait with the fictional twins. They were always extremely good at making the most of any given situation. If there’s a joke to be made, they’ll make it. If there’s something to blag, they’ll blag it. When we were making the later films, the filmmakers wanted to shoot numerous “behind the scenes” features as bonus material. They suggested going to everybody’s houses and filming them going about their daily Muggle activities—walking the dog, washing the car, mowing the lawn and so forth. Mostly we were unenthusiastic about these suggestions. The Phelps boys had other ideas, and they had a very Fred and George way of “suggesting” it. They played golf, as did Rupert, and I had also just started to enjoy hacking a white ball around. Why don’t we all go to play golf somewhere iconic, they casually suggested, and they can film that? How about, say, the Celtic Manor in Wales, a very popular golfing destination that was about to host the Ryder Cup on their brand-new, impossible-to-get-on-to course?

Much to our delight they fell for it, and so James, Ollie, Rupert and I prepared to road-trip our way to the Celtic Manor. But hang on! Surely it wouldn’t work if there were other golfers ahead or behind us, the twins helpfully pointed out. We would have a camera crew with us, who would only get in the way of other golfers. A brilliant idea seemed to arrive spontaneously. Wouldn’t it be much more sensible if we were to have the whole course to ourselves, they said almost in unison. Their cunning observation was taken on board, and the upshot was that one of the most desirable golf courses in the world was booked out for a whole day, simply for the four of us to hack away at. As in every golfing contest we’ve ever had, the Weasleys won. Bloody Gryffindorks.