Turns out it wasn’t just Daniel Radcliffe having doubts during the Harry Potter years.
Former Harry Potter exec David Heyman told The Hollywood Reporter that Emma Watson almost hung up her wizarding robes because (in a very Hermione move)
She wanted to focus on her schoolwork.
Talking about negotiating contracts for each Potter film, Heyman said that:
” Emma [Watson], in particular, was quite academic and was very keen in pursuit of schooling and was wrestling a little bit more than the others.
So each time there was a negotiation, it was not about a financial [matter], it really was about, ‘Do I want to be a part of this?’”
Despite the “tipping point”, when the producers admitted they had to “be sensitive to her needs and how important school was to her”, Emma Watson happily decided to stay on for the whole franchise – but also got a good education, later attending Brown University. And while she had to take a two-year gap during her degree to focus on promotional duties for the films, she told Rookie magazine that she enjoyed the freedom of studying on set:
“Really, I’ve kind of been in charge of my own education since I started out on Potter when I was nine or ten.”
On Monday 25 November, we wrote
Shock news for Harry Potter fans: Daniel Radcliffe revealed he almost quit the film franchise after the third instalment was made. His reason? To avoid being typecast.
Speaking to The Guardian, Radcliffe revealed that once filming for The Prisoner Of Azkaban had wrapped, he considered leaving midway through the series to try and audition for other roles:
“By the third film, I thought, if there’s a time to get out, it’s now; there’s still enough time for another actor to come in and establish himself… For a while I thought, if I do all of them, will I be able to move on to other stuff or should I start doing other stuff now?”
Luckily for Potter fans, Radcliffe, who was just 14 at the time, decided to stay playing Harry for the next five films – because he’d miss his cast-mates, and because he realised just how good a role it was for him at the time, adding, “Actually there aren’t many great parts out there for teenage boys, certainly not as good as Harry Potter”.
Despite that blip during his career as a boy wizard, Daniel insists that he no longer resents the role that made him famous – describing it as a “very cool thing that did wonders for the British film industry”, despite the fact “you might not always be happy with the work you did on it”.
And he refuses to distance himself from Potter, comparing it with Paul McCartney not wanting to talk about the Beatles:
“I know that Potter is going to be with me for the rest of my life, so to try to set a goal where nobody talks about that anymore is stupid”.
It’s now 10 years down the line from when Daniel made that fateful decision, and we can’t imagine anyone else playing the bespectacled wizard. With an upcoming role in Kill Your Darlings, plus multiple stage and screen roles under his belt, since the Potter movies, we think he made the right decision.
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