Daniel Radcliffe Wrote an Apology to ‘Harry Potter’ Co-Star After a Prank Went too Far
Daniel Radcliffe and his Harry Potter cast mates were accustomed to pulling pranks on each other behind the scenes. But there was one prank Radcliffe felt he went a little overboard with.
Daniel Radcliffe once revealed what his favorite prank was
Pranks were common on the Harry Potter set, and Radcliffe was both the victim and perpetrator of several behind-the-scenes shenanigans. But there was one prank Radcliffe felt may have trumped all.
“There’s – in the 3rd film – there’s a shot in the great hall of all the kids sleeping in the great hall, and the camera starts very very wide, and comes in so that it’s an inch from my face, a very long developing set, yeah, and Alan Rickman decided he would plant one of those fart machines in my, uh, sleeping bag, and they waited until like -the camera had come in for this huge DRAMATIC developing shot, and then unleashed this tremendous noise in the great hall,” Radcliffe once said on a Reddit AMA.
He initially thought the prank was executed by one of the kids.
“But as it turns out, it was one of the members of Britain’s acting royalty,” he wrote. “I think I laughed a lot, was probably a bit embarrassed, but it was really really funny.”
Daniel Radcliffe apologized after a ‘Harry Potter’ prank went too far
The late Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid in the Wizard series, was on the receiving end of one of Radcliffe’s elaborate hoaxes. Radcliffe managed to change the language settings on Coltrane’s phone after managing to get a hold of it. This left Coltrane incapable of making any phone calls.
“Because my phone was now in Turkish nobody could work out how to change it back into English and it became a bit of a problem,” Coltrane once said according to Daily Star.
Coltrane was able to solve the issue, but noticed that Radcliffe felt particularly guilty about the inconvenience.
“Eventually we found a girl in the Harry Potter make-up department who was Turkish Cypriot. She phoned her mum and was chatting away in great detail until they sorted it out. I think Daniel was so upset at what had happened that he wrote me that note…’Dear Mr. Coltrane, I’m sorry I changed your mobile telephone into Turkish,’” Coltrane remembered.
Emma Watson felt immediate guilt over a prank she pulled on Daniel Radcliffe
Radcliffe wasn’t the only cast member who felt guilty over a prank. At one point, Watson also joined in on the fun on set. Radcliffe recalled a time when his co-star and friend tried to prank him with his favorite music group.
“Emma Watson, when I was like 14, told me that one of my favourite bands had broken up. It was like, really early in the morning so I hadn’t even got that it was April 1st yet… I was a fan of this band called the Libertines, who were very fractious and they might have broken up at any point, and she came in and went, ‘It’s happened, it’s finally happened,’” Radcliffe once said according to Hollywood.
But Watson couldn’t handle seeing Radcliffe’s reaction, and immediately exposed the hoax.
“But she just had to immediately say, ‘No, no, no, it’s a joke, it’s April Fool’s’, because I didn’t cry, but my face was like, ashen… My lip quivered, definitely,” he said.
