Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) Celebrates New Harry Potter Store Experiences & Reveals Filming Details

Well, I’m equally just as bad as I was when I was 11 years old. It’s very different, I will say, because different from my experience, this is much more like it became in later years. This is much more like it was for Dan and Rupert.

In my era, it was my first day on set, so it’s like the year 2000, 24 years ago, and it’s my first day at work and they were just kind of figuring this stuff out. I think, in hindsight flying by the seat of their pants honestly, because they just took a broomstick, put it on a big crane, put the crane on the back of a pickup truck, and then strapped me to it and then just drove the pickup truck around. And they had all these kind of like, mad torture devices. There was one that just spun the broomstick, a corkscrew ones that made it go up and down and made it drop. And they just, again, strapped me to it and did all this mad stuff with it.

It became much more sophisticated years later and became much more fun doing this than I do. Mine was very uncomfortable — not unsafe, I trusted the stunt guys — I don’t think it was, but this one is much more comfortable. Yes, it have a very comfortable seat. You also have a screen in real time. You can see what you’re doing. And we had to use our imagination and we only found out what idiots we look like on the big screen at the premier. You guys can see it firsthand right there. Yeah. It’s a different experience to mine, but a much superior and better experience. 

Yeah, it’s wicked actually, because obviously having shot in England and the majority of the stuff being at the [Warner Bros.] studio tour in England, it’s such a treat for the stuff to travel and to go around the world and for people elsewhere to get to see it and experience it.

I saw the Quibbler [Magazine] earlier that they’ve got here and the reason I enjoyed that and it just struck me was because if you watch the movies, it’s onscreen for a matter of seconds, I think it’s probably Evanna’s [Evanna Lynch, Luna Lovegood] first. Was she reading it when she first appeared in Order of the Phoenix or whatever? I can’t remember. But anyway, Evanna obviously had that Quibbler when she was reading it. You might think, oh, it’s just a cover. And the same with all the textbooks in the school, all the stuff that you see in Diagon Alley, but it’s not, I mean, those things were made almost in their entirety, these full things, knowing full well that people would never really get to see them on screen.

They’ve done quite a lot of stuff. I mean the swords been done — I know because signed a bunch of them. Haven’t got one though, yeah I just put it out there. I haven’t got one — I don’t even have a wand either. It’s a weird thing, you sign your image away when you’re a kid and there’s so many things and it’s amazing when so many fans bring these incredible things to me, I’ve never seen them before. I love it. It’s like, oh, there’s my face on that thing that I’ve never seen before. It’s from Japan. I didn’t even know they sold that there. And it things that you could never even dream of. And they’ve done it and it’s incredible and it’s so cool, so cool to be a part of that.

I mean, I don’t really know what there’s left to do. I was going to say Neville’s cardigan, but it’s been done. It’s out there. What else? Were the Mandrakes done, and they do earmuffs? Are there licensed earmuffs? Especially in New York when it gets cold in the winter, I feel people should appreciate some Professor Sprout earmuffs.

I never anticipated that Neville was going to be quite as pivotal … obviously I knew that Neville was going to be important. I knew that he was sort of being teed up for something and we’d learned about the Prophecy by then and his kind of history with Bellatrix and Voldemort and his parents. But I never thought that he was going to go and do something as cool and heroic as that.

Working with wands is exciting, sure. But the films I grew up watching … swords are even cooler. So to pull the sword of Gryffindor, because I was always very jealous of Dan [Radcliffe, Harry Potter] that he got to use the sword in Chamber of Secrets. And so to have the moment of pulling the sword out, I remember when I first read it and I was just like, it’s weird because I read it as a fan first and I tried really hard not to put myself in the shoes of it when I first read it. Sometimes it was harder than others, but I remember reading it and then kind of getting to the end of that chapter and being like, ‘yo, that’s me. That’s actually going to be whoa.’ But thinking, ‘nah, no, it either won’t be in the script or they’ll just, they’ll cut that bit out, they’ll give it to someone else. That won’t happen.’ And so when I finally, years later, I think that book came out maybe two years, maybe more before we actually took around to filming it. So when the screenplay finally arrived and I read it and it was all in there again, you sort of go through these stages of yeah, but we won’t actually shoot it. There was lots of stuff like that. In Goblet of Fire, Bonnie [Wright, Ginny Weasley] and I spent six weeks learning a Tango for the Yule Ball, and then we never even shot it — it wasn’t cut, we never shot it. And there was loads of moments like that that you read in the script, thought that’d be amazing, and you never get round to it.

And then suddenly I’m on set and Ray [Ralph Fiennes, Lord Voldemort] is there and, I’m being taught how to pull this sword out of the hat and that was a little cool illusion, trick in itself. And then even then you go, but no one’s ever going to see it. They’ll cut this out, it won’t make the film. And then I’m at the premier and it’s there. Yeah, it’s incredible.

I felt a tremendous amount of responsibility and pressure on, and obviously working with Ray for my first time, very, very intimidating person — I think deliberately, because at the end of shooting, when we’d finally finished, I had a lovely, friendly, warm conversation with him. So I think that during the shoot it was kind of deliberate intent to be intimidating or maybe he’s just quite an intense actor

But yeah, so that was kind of full arm. I being very nervous about that. And obviously that particular scene had everyone, every man, his dog was in it. So it was like you’ve got all of my peers, but then all of the older actors as well. Jason [Isaacs, Lucius Malfoy] was there, Robbie [Coltrane, Hagrid] was there and there was Maggie [Smith, Minerva McGonagall] was there, all those incredible people, bloody, I’ve got to go and do this monologue, in front of all these people. And again, so supportive. Everyone was so supportive. And Ray as well. I mean acting is reacting, that’s what they say. It’s a tennis match and you can only play as well as your opponent. And to have someone like that opposite, it made my job incredibly easy. Well, not easy, easier. 

It was a very, very special moment. I feel very privileged to have been a part of which I realize is a very meandering answer to your question. But no, I never thought that was going to happen and I felt very overwhelmed at the time and I feel very proud to have been able to do it. I haven’t watched it back, never will. I’m very proud that I did it at some point.

The six of us? The chat that will not be named … Dumbledore’s Army is a bit obvious, isn’t it? I think that’s a bit obvious. The special ones; the heroes; the best ones. We hate Slytherin, any of thee above.