‘Harry Potter’: Tom Felton ‘Didn’t Get off to the Greatest Start’ With Emma Watson
The cast of the Harry Potter movies are still closely connected. After eight films, they still stay in touch and even reunited for a reunion special. Even if they went their separate ways, they will forever be connected via Hogwarts. In a recent interview, Tom Felton revealed the first time he met Emma Watson didn’t go so well.
Felton was a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast on Nov. 1 to discuss his autobiography, Beyond the Wand. Host Josh Horowitz read the book, and interviewed Felton for the later Harry Potter movies, so he made Felton tell the story of his first meeting with Watson.
Tom Felton and Emma Watson were just kids before ‘Harry Potter’
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 2001. That was only four years after the publication of the book, called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the U.K. Warner Brothers was casting kids for the movies the year 2000, at which point author J.K. Rowling had only written through Goblet of Fire. Felton was 13 then and knew what was up at the audition.
“Chris Columbus tried this trick where there’s like 20 kids together and he’d say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to leave you guys for a second. We’re going to go talk over here,’” Felton said on Happy Sad Confused. “The producers and what not would go into one corner and the other guy was still holding the boom mic, this huge boom mic over my head. So I knew exactly what was going on.”
Emma Watson was fooled by this ‘Harry Potter’ trickery
As a snarky teenager at the time, Felton remembers having an attitude. The younger kids weren’t quite as savvy as Felton on a film set. Daniel Radclliffe would have been 11, and Watson was 9. At 35, Felton can look back and regret that he mouthed off.
“This little brushy haired girl came up to me and was like, ‘What’s that?’” Felton said. “I looked at her very arrogantly and said, ‘It’s a microphone, you idiot. What do you think it is?’ I’m pretty sure they heard that and I’m pretty sure that helped me get the part of Draco Malfoy.”
Emma Watson forgave Tom Felton
Watson and Felton would become close throughout the making of the eight films, even though their characters were enemies. There would be rumors they were dating, but Felton and Watson maintain they’ve been close friends, and remain so. Felton was a little red faced when that “brushy haired girl” was hired on the film.
“It also turns out that I saw that girl two months later and her name was Emma Watson,” Felton said. “So we didn’t get off to the greatest start. She didn’t hold it against me too bad.”
