Rupert Grint and Emma Watson Both Had the Worst Time Filming Harry Potter
Filming Harry Potter was fun! Except when Rupert Grint’s phobia stalled the production or when Emma Watson had painful flashbacks after the last movie, of course…
Don’t get us wrong: we’re sure that even despite all the drawbacks, the Golden Trio actors were probably having a blast starring in the Harry Potter movies.
However, just like with any other job and occupation, there were numerous little and big things that were spoiling the experience — especially when it came to the young actors.
Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, and Daniel Radcliffe spoke quite a lot about them in various interviews, but one thing they rarely addressed was their fears. But admittedly, sometimes they had quite scary and forgettable moments on the set of Harry Potter that they’d be happy to never relive ever again.
Rupert Grint, for one, shared a peculiar similarity with his character Ron Weasley: just like Harry’s fictional friend, the actor had intense arachnophobia. As you might have already guessed, this detail made the filming of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets quite stressful for the young star who was terrified of spiders.
As soon as Rupert had a spider crawling on him, the poor boy had a full-blown panic attack and it became clear that real spiders were a no-go. After a major production delay, it was decided to use CGI to add spiders to the scene — and even after that, Grint was really scared to watch the final version of the movie with the computer-created spiders.
“It really made me feel uneasy. I didn’t like looking at it at all. We saw that scene in the cinema, they kind of added visual effects — all these kinds of moving ones of the ground. I still can’t watch that scene. Absolutely terrifying,” the actor told GQ.
The Battle of Hogwarts, too, was quite a challenging experience for the actors. Emma Watson, in particular, was horrified while shooting the wizarding war scenes.
"They put plugs in our ears to protect our eardrums, but you can still hear because you're so close to the bangs. There's this one scene where they detonated all of these bombs, like, right next to us. I was absolutely, genuinely terrified,” Watson shared with BANG! Showbiz.
So while the Harry Potter movies were undeniably fun to film, they came with an entire set of challenges for their younger cast. We can clearly see why the Battle of Hogwarts could be scary for everyone involved — but whose brilliant idea was it to put real spiders on a 12-year-old boy with severe arachnophobia?..