Harry Potter Underwater Scenes Were a Nightmare to Film and Almost Killed the Golden Trio Actors
Out of the expansive list of extremely uncomfortable feats the younger Harry Potter cast had to go through on the set, the underwater scenes were definitely the worst…and the deadliest.
The Harry Potter movies came with both perks and hardships for the younger actors, especially Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. On the one hand, they had great colleagues, money, and fame — but on the other hand, they had to deal with loneliness from isolation and get through numerous dangerous or uncomfortable experiences.
Out of the many things the Golden Trio actors absolutely hated, their underwater scenes were the absolute worst — even worse than Quidditch, which Radcliffe despised. Throughout the eight movies, there have been several underwater sequences, and all of them were extremely unpleasant to film.
Daniel, who had the most underwater scenes, vividly recalled his training for them. Before the Triwizard Tournament challenge, he’d undergone six months of intense scuba diving sessions and earned two ear infections from those. Still, after that, the young actor knew how to do underwater scenes for the rest of the franchise.
Not like it made his Half-Blood Prince cave scene any less tricky, of course.
“I was holding myself by a rope under the surface of the water, and then, on action, I let go, and they pulled me on the wire. So I flew out of the water, and there was like a ring of fire around me, so I was just like bursting out of the surface of the water through a ring of fire,” the actor recalled when speaking to GQ.
But every other underwater scene pales in comparison to the brutality of Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Emma Watson hated every second of their lake drop!
“I can tell you the worst right now. It was on [Deathly Hallows: Part 2], we get dropped by a dragon into the lake and I think it was January or February. The lake wasn’t heated, and because we had to get changed as part of the next scene, we couldn’t wear anything underneath. I was lucky. I had my bottom half with some thermals on, but I was like, ‘This must be a joke.’ It was so cold!” Watson told JoBlo.
According to the actress, that scene almost ended with a tragedy: from the drastic temperature drop and the ice-cold water, “Rupert thought at one point that his heart had stopped beating.” This could’ve gone very wrong very quickly, but thankfully, the disaster was avoided…and the Golden Trio got to spend the rest of Deathly Hallows: Part 2 soaking wet most of the time.
It’s safe to say that Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint were not the biggest fans of underwater scenes after all they’d gone through for the Harry Potter movies.