19

A BOP ON THE NOSE

or

CRABBE, HAGRID AND THE SPOOKY RUBBER TOM

There were hundreds of actors on the Harry Potter set. Some I barely—or never—saw. Others I got to know well. So let me take you on a little tour around Hogwarts, and I’ll introduce you to a few of the faces.

I’ve told you about Emma Watson’s right hook. Long story short: keep away from it. But she wasn’t the only one to plant a knuckle sandwich on my cheekbones. And from time to time, I gave as good as I got.

Devon Murray played Seamus Finnigan. He was always brilliant on set and a proper little Seamus. He was a real motormouth and mischievous, but kind. He clocked me in the face once, in a department store when we were on location. I can’t remember why. Maybe I’d made some sarcastic comment. Maybe I was completely innocent and it was just the result of a dare. We used to get up to all kinds of nonsense like that. I remember somebody making a rancid potion of Coke, milk and coffee beans and offering a quid to anyone who would drink it. So perhaps, in a similar vein, somebody had offered him fifty pence to deck me. It wasn’t personal. At least, it was as impersonal as a punch in the face ever can be.

Jamie Waylett, who played Crabbe, once received a childish bop on the nose in the Great Hall from me. That wasn’t personal either. It was just standard behaviour for the three Slytherins, who were thick as thieves. Josh “Goyle” Herdman was about my age, but Jamie was several years younger. It didn’t stop us from being close, because Jamie was way older than his years. Like me and Josh, he was very into hip hop and was an extremely talented rapper. But there was sometimes a sense that he carried round with him a kind of pent-up aggression. We were close, but we fought. In that sense, I suppose, we were in real life very much like the characters we played. Mostly it was childish over-exuberance. He’d antagonise me for something or other, I’d bite back and the situation would deteriorate. We had lots of scenes together, which meant we had lots of downtime together. And you know how it is when kids rub each other up the wrong way when they’ve been spending a lot of time with each other. But the next day it would be as if nothing had happened. We were just kids being kids, albeit lairy ones.

One day, though, we were filming in the Great Hall. Jamie was sitting to my left at the Slytherin table, Josh to my right, and Jamie was winding me up incessantly. There was no malice in it, and on another day it might have been me needling him, or Josh needling me. Jamie kept kicking me under the table and elbowing me and whispering under his breath that I was a twat, just as the cameras were starting to roll. Now, I was not entirely innocent when it came to messing around on set, but I did try to be professional. I did try to be conscientious. One of the things that the adults really hammered into us was that once the crew had spent hours setting up a shot and the cameras were about to roll, whatever it is that you’re doing, you shut up and wait to hear the magic word: “Action!” And just because the camera isn’t pointing at you, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to act. In fact, your acting off camera can sometimes be as important as your acting on camera. Your reactions, your eye line and your dialogue are ballast for whoever is on camera at the time. For whatever reason, I found Jamie’s needling particularly irksome that day, so a millisecond before they called “Action!,” I turned and punched him straight on the nose. Not hard, but enough to make his nose leak a little claret. Somehow it was Josh who got pulled up in front of the producers and given a lecture about not riling Jamie. Talk about crossed wires. Sorry Josh, mate.

When we weren’t indulging in fisticuffs, though, Josh, Jamie and I were intensely close. We were normally getting up to some sort of mischief. When we weren’t, we would be indulging our passion for music. I set up a little studio in my trailer and we recorded quite a number of tracks. It was about as hardcore gangster rap as three white English Slytherin boys could spit out. The recordings still exist. Crabbe and Goyle’s lyrical skills still astound me, and I listen to them to this day.

As the films progressed, though, it became clear that Jamie’s interest in filming them started to decline. He seemed to lack enthusiasm, to be despondent even. He pulled the same trick that I used to at school, putting his headphone cable up his sleeve and listening to music when he should have been listening to the director. It was an attitude that suited his character perfectly, since Crabbe doesn’t give a monkey’s about anyone or anything. But it became apparent to us who knew him that he was not having an easy time of it during filming, or even a particularly enjoyable time.

And then things started to become complicated for him outside of the world of Potter. After we’d finished filming Half-Blood Prince, he had a scrape with the law. It was hard, after that, for the filmmakers to invite Jamie back for the final films. I felt for him. He’d been there from the beginning and, scuffles aside, we’d been mates. It was part of his character not to care about authority, but when that characteristic informed his own life, there was suddenly no place for him. I understood the reasons, of course, but it was sad. Our original Slytherin trio was no more.

Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid, was one of the few actors I recognised when we started making the Potter films, thanks to his roles in GoldenEye and Cracker. Perhaps more than anybody else, he understood the importance of keeping it lighthearted. He was a joker, but he was also the person that the jokes happened to. Or rather, he was the person who allowed the jokes to happen to him, and his reactions were priceless. There was a phase when Daniel’s and my hilarious on-set gag was to go around changing the language on people’s phones so that it was difficult to find your way back to the English setting. Robbie was definitely the butt of that joke several times, because his reaction to it was so enjoyable. He’d narrow his eyes, peer around and mutter: “What fucker did that?” He acted as if he was ready to kill the culprit, but really he was just entering into the spirit of things. Robbie was always keen to remind us that we weren’t there to cure cancer. We weren’t saving the world. We were simply making a film. We should remember that, not get too big for our boots and try to have a laugh along the way. He had a good dose of Hagrid in him: the big friendly giant who never lost sight of what was important in life.

In the Prisoner of Azkaban scene where Draco is kicked by Buckbeak, he has to be carried off by Hagrid. All sorts of crafty technical wizardry was employed to make Hagrid look like a giant. Most of my scenes with him were not played by Robbie, but by Martin Bayfield, a six-foot-ten rugby player in an enormous animatronic suit. (It was an incredibly hot costume to wear. Jamie and I were often told off for corpsing at the sight of steam coming out of Hagrid’s ears.) In this scene, however, Hagrid’s face was fully on display, so rather than make him very big, they had to make me very small. They created a dummy Draco about a quarter smaller than my actual size for Robbie to carry. This was no toy—it took months to build and cost tens of thousands of pounds—but naturally, like any kid, I was delighted by the idea of having a fake mini-me to play around with. My immediate plan was to take it to a car park, wait for someone to reverse and then throw it behind the car. Somehow I managed to restrain myself from carrying out that practical joke, but my mum was on set that day and I did take special pains to freak her out with the spooky rubber Tom. Robbie joined in the fun. The more my mum squirmed at the thought of her youngest son immortalised in mannequin form, the more Robbie waved the decoy Draco in her direction, to the absolute hilarity of us all. That was Robbie through and through. He had a cutting sense of humour as an adult, but he was brilliant with the kids, too. (The dummy Draco is now happily retired and living out the rest of his days at the Potter studio tour at Leavesden.)

Robbie was also kind, and caring. In the first film, Hagrid takes Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco into the Forbidden Forest. Part of that scene was shot in the studio where they built the Forbidden Forest. Part of it, though, was on location and required a night shoot. I have a distinct memory of sitting on a plastic tarp on the floor at two in the morning in a cold forest with Daniel, Rupert and Emma. Emma was only nine years old and she was curled up asleep next to me while we waited for them to set up the next shot. But while everybody was frantically going about their business, it was Robbie who kept spirits high and made sure that we were comfortable and warm and well looked after.

In later years, my main contact with Robbie would be on press junkets and publicity tours. He’s a real petrol head with a vast knowledge of mechanics, motors, cars and planes. We shared that passion, but most of all I always looked forward to publicity appearances with him because you were guaranteed a lark and a laugh.

Let’s face it: Neville Longbottom was never intended to be the stud of the show. Matthew Lewis, who played Neville from the beginning, very much looked the part in the first film. He had the ears, he had the face, he had the endearing accent. He was Neville head to toe.

But there was a problem. Each year, when we all congregated to make the next film, Matthew was ever so slightly hunkier, which meant that—physically speaking—he was ever so slightly less Neville-like. Fortunately he’s a very good actor, but it reached the point in the later films where they had to give him a wedge behind his ears, fake teeth and a little fat suit to stop him looking like the hunk he was becoming. Who’d have thought that Neville would end up in his pants on the front cover of Attitude magazine?

Matthew is a great example of everything good about Potter. He’s a lovely, down-to-earth guy, humble to a fault. His knowledge of and interest in all manner of subjects guarantees great conversation, and that makes him one of my favourite people to have a pint with. Like me, he prefers not to watch the films back (nobody likes hearing their own voice on tape, right?), but he’s developed into a really impressive actor and has a quiet confidence in his own ability. Of all the Potter alumni I bump into, Matthew is one of those I enjoy seeing the most. Any Slytherin–Gryffindork rivalry is long forgotten.

There were certain actors on the set who you’d never really recognise out of character, even though they were absolute legends. They just looked—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—like slightly scruffy older men. John Hurt, who played Ollivander, was one of those. I’m a huge fan of his now, particularly of his performance in Midnight Express, but at the time I had no idea he was one of the greats. You simply wouldn’t know it to look at him.

The same was true of David Bradley, who played Filch. He was the very opposite of his character: there was nothing malevolent or bumbling about him at all. Whereas some actors demand attention whenever they’re near the set, David was always unassuming. He’d sit quietly in the corner, the very model of calmness. But I learned a lot from seeing how he could morph repulsively into Filch, with such an expression of distaste and contempt. I always enjoyed watching his performance. He clearly loved his job.

I was on set one day when I saw another slightly scruffy older bloke wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I’d occasionally seen him around and I thought he was one of the cleaning staff. What can I say? He just had that look. We were outside the Great Hall and I thought it would be a pleasant gesture to compliment him on his work. I squeaked my shoes on the polished concrete floor, gave him a thumbs-up and said, “Top work, mate!” He turned around to see if I was talking to someone behind him, gave me a slightly odd frown and said nothing.

Later that day I was getting my barnet done and the same guy walked into the hair and make-up department. He seemed to be showing family and friends around. Bit weird, for one of the cleaning staff. I had a horrible feeling I might have made a faux-pas, so when he’d left I asked someone, “Who is that?”

“Who?”

“That!”

They laughed. “Gary Oldman, obviously.”

I cringed with embarrassment when I realised I’d mistaken him for the cleaner. I wanted to apologise—not that he’d really have given a monkey’s—but in the end I took the easier route of totally ignoring my mistake and pretending I’d known who he was all along. In my defence, for such a big star, he was hardly starry at all. He was unassuming and down-to-earth, likely to be seen making a cup of tea for everyone, rather than playing the room.

Just as Sirius became a father figure to Harry, I had the sense that Gary became something of an inspiration for Daniel, helping him to navigate the tricky path of growing up in the spotlight as well as hone his acting skills. They seemed to me to share a very similar sense of humour and approach to the other cast and crew. I think some of us—myself included—were a bit jealous of that bond. We could see that, in part thanks to Gary’s influence, Dan was really starting to learn the craft better than any of us. Who better to have on your side in that respect than Gary Oldman?

Warwick Davis was another of the very few Potter actors I recognised at the start because I was a fan of the film Willow (now the name of my four-year-old, squirrel-obsessed, bottomless-stomached Labrador). He was there from the start of the first film, in which he played Professor Flitwick—one of several roles he would take over the course of the films. He was always quietly charming and fun with the kids. He became a dear friend of mine, and I had to admire his method of getting around set. Because of his height, it would take him longer to get around than the rest of us, even when we were kids. So he brought in a modified Segway to whizz around on. It was cut to size, so the label read “egway.” It was quite a sight, seeing Flitwick or Griphook sail past with a nonchalant wave and a cheery comment. “Morning, chaps!” But there’s no doubt that we got used to unusual sights, surrounded as we were with the characters and paraphernalia of the wizarding world…