HBO First Look (PoA)

Daniel Radcliffe: This time is a lot darker and more… scary.

Rupert Grint: I was just looking forward to, like, all the Dementors.

Emma Watson: They scare the living daylights out of me!

DR: We’ve got loads of new people. It’s great. Gary Oldman playing Sirius Black.

Gary Oldman: I am this dark figure who has escaped from Azkaban and I’m after Potter.

DR: Emma Thompson’s playing Professor Trelawney.

Emma Thompson: She sees into the future all the time. I think that she’s a bit of a charlatan, really.

DR: David Thewlis’s playing Professor Lupin

Davit Thewlis: He’s certainly the kindest of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers that we’ve seen so far. He also has his dark secret.

DR: Yet, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.

Michael Gambon: He’s the powerful, good Dumbledore – the one you can lean on.

DR: There’s a new take on Hagrid

Robbie Coltrane: There is a great development in that Hagrid has been taken on as staff. He’s Professor Hagrid.

DR: I just love the creatures in this one as well.

DR: There’s a new director. He came with a lot of new ideas for all of us.

Alfonso Cuaron: I want to try to tell the movie with a style that was as fluid as possible. I see the camera come, say “OK, give me your hand” and the camera just takes you through the whole right. From the first frame to the last frame.

Chris Columbus: I wanted to make absolutely certain we were continuing to be faithful to the books. But at the same time we’re giving each director who comes in a little more freedom.

David Heyman: Alfonso was very respectful of the world that Chris Columbus had created. And another quality that unites Chris and Alfonso is that they both are children at heart and I think they brought that child-like sense of wonder to the films.

AC: I really wanted to do it more contemporary. This film takes place in 2004, so we create the costumes that they wear in a more contemporary way.

EW: She’s in jeans! Yes, yes! I’m in jeans. Thank God not another one of those scarves. And the itchy jumpers. It’s improved, so much.

RG: The uniforms are kind of bit more… bit more relaxed this time. Ties are a bit looser, shirts untucked and that was kind of like Alfonso’s idea.

DR: It just really seemed like a natural development. When kids become teenagers, they change. They change the way they dress. Their attitude’s gonna change.

DR: I think in the first two films, Harry is slightly nervous about actually, really making a stand towards the Dursleys but in this film there’s a major stand towards the Dursleys.

EW: In this one Hermione changes completely. She’s rock ‘n roll. She’s girl power. She’s out there doing everything. She’s just had enough . You know, she has taken it for three years and suddenly, it’s like it’s uncontrollable. Malfoy insults her…. That’s it! Smack!

RG: The characters are growing up. It’s different but it’s good.

EW: In this one it’s their first fight, basically, their first arguments. Hermione and Ron are fighting about the cat and the rat.

RG: The argument was fun. I enjoyed that, yeah.

EW: Any excuse to make it out that they hate each other. Any excuse. They’re always niggling each other and always having a go at each other.

DR: There’s a lot of stuff going on between them but also there’s… you kinda start to get a feeling in this one that…. Hermione and Ron have kind of got crushes on each other, really.

EW: There is always this threat that they might actually like each other and they don’t like that at all.

DR: In this one Harry has got a lot of problems. First of all, I mean, he thinks somebody is actually trying to kill him.

GO: I’m imprisoned in Azkaban. I’m this guy who, I guess, everybody thinks that I in fact went to the Dark Side.

CC: You immediately are frightened of him. You think this guy is what everyone’s saying.

GO: As the story unfolds, there’s all sorts of new developments, along the way.

DR: Lupin is a very instrumental character in the film. Not only that, but also I think probably the key scenes, the key emotional scenes, which basically make up the heart of the film, are… seem to me to be between Harry and Lupin. Almost every time.

DT: He’s one of the last surviving links Harry has to his parents. And there’s quite a moving scene where Lupin explains to Harry quite what his parents were like. He’s someone who can actually tell him, firsthand, what they were like as people which he may have not heard before.

DR: The third film is incredibly intense emotionally. But it’s actually quite funny as well.

ET: I’m playing Professor Trelawney, who is the professor of Divination at Hogwarts. She has got a genuine gift, but like all those people, she has to kind of make it stretch, she has to sort of make it bigger than it actually is.

AC: Emma… wonderful… It was so much fun to work with Emma. Those scenes, so eccentric, so cuckoo!

DH: We can’t replace Richard Harris as Dumbledore and when Richard passed away, we knew we had a big hole to fill as it were.

CC: What we had to do is find someone who embodied the spirit of Dumbledore. I had seen Michael on stage a couple of times, and I thought, I have a feeling that he can become Dumbledore, make it his own and still with a little sort of tip of the hat to Richard.

AC: Our approach of Dumbledore is a little…. Slightly different than before. A little bit more playful, if anything a little bit more mischievous.

MG: Oh, this world is so wonderful to be in. To wear these costumes, these figures. A powerful imagination. Yeah, I love it.

Maggie Smith: This is a stunning cast, this time and they’re so good, all of these guys. There’s a whole lot of new people. The magic never kind of goes. It’is a magic place to be.

RC: The Hippogriff is an animal which basically looks like a cross between a horse and a bird and it’s Hagrid’s job to introduce it to the children and… the Hippogriff itself is a wonderful creature. It’s absolutely astonishing.

Mark Radcliffe: One of the most beautiful sequences we have is the Hippogriff flying lesson, where Harry takes off on the Hippogriff and he flies over Hogwarts and over the lake. I mean, it is beautifully shot and it is amazing.

DR: Buckbeak is a very important creature in the film. Even more important are the Dementors.

EW: They are basically these awful creatures that suck out every drop of happiness left in you.

AC: Monster Book of Monsters. We have the Knight Bus.

DR: The Knight Bus sequence in itself is so funny.

DT: We have Boggarts. Boggarts are a manifestation of the thing you most fear.

DH: For example, for Neville, that horrific image is Professor Snape, but if he then imagined Professor Snape dressed up as an old woman, as his grandmother, that’s quite funny. So we get to see Alan Rickman dressed up as an old woman. Haven’t seen that before.

DT: Oh, yeah. Alan Rickman in a dress. I forgot about it. I think it was Alan Rickman’s worst fear.

DR: I do love filming, I just love the work. I love the acting part of it. I just love it.

AC: This kids have been very lucky to work with some of the best actors alive, in number one and number two. And so they wanted to start taking more seriously their craft. And they were willing then to explore emotional territories that they haven’t explored before.

DR: Each film has challenged me because I am going into my own territory, basically. And, I think, one of the things has helped a lot is the face that me and Harry are kind of experiencing a lot of the same feelings at the same time and so we can, I think I can associate with him really.

CC: We took these kids when they had no experience and it’s a sense of real pride to see that these kids have become such accomplished professional actors. It’s like seeing your own children up on screen. I was, I am very very proud of them all.

RC: I really am amazed at how good they are and how they’ve sort of maintained their energy levels and stuff. They do work very hard. They’re much better at accessing the parts of themselves that they need to find in order to project certain feelings and emotions and stuff which is very difficult for children.

EW: These actors and actresses I was working with completely swept me off my feet and people ask me sometimes “Do they give you tips?” They don’t need to. Just watching them, just being around them is amazing. Absolutely amazing.

RG: There’s a lot of really good ones on this one. Gary Oldman was really cool, yeah. Really fun working with him.

GO: Rupert and Daniel and Emma are just, you know, delightful. They’re very professional, very focused. Dan is doing a fantastic job and I think he’s matured and really growing and becoming a good actor.

AC: It was so touching to see Gary Oldman and Daniel trying to, you know, like working together and putting together the scene. Or with David Thewlis. It was great.

DR: The film is just kind of mindblowing really.

EW: A lot is introduced in this one: amazing people, places, experiences

ET: ... (???) of tension…

RG: It’s going to be really scary. It’s gonna be cool.

MS: These fantastic things. You just can’t believe what you see.

GO: There’s an energy which is terrific.

DR: It’s very dark, very action packed. It’s really fantastic.

Written by Madika
Last Change of this page: Aug 5th, 2004, 11:55 am