Tom Felton Reveals Behind-the-Scenes Rift on Harry Potter Set
In his newly released memoir titled Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, Tom Felton shares his Harry Potter behind-the-scene experience.
Are you a Gryffindor? Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff? Or maybe Slytherin? Every Harry Potter fan will answer this question in a matter of nanoseconds. If you are into a Wizarding World, it is kind of important to know which Hogwarts house you belong to and probably never deal with fans from other houses, especially Slytherin, right?
Turns out, this childish and somewhat hostile game was not a game for the actors who starred in the Harry Potter franchise. At least, at the early stages of filming.
The main child stars of the Harry Potter franchise, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Tom Felton, started their acting career when they were little kids and starred in all eight films for ten years, which meant they spent their childhood and teenage years side-by-side. Now, Tom Felton's new memoir book has opened some details about those years.
Tom Felton played the role of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter's primary rival in their first years of Hogwarts. Draco was a Slytherin, while Harry and his best friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley belonged in the Gryffindor house. Tom Felton shares in his book that the division between the houses existed not only in the fictional world but also in real life between child actors. According to Tom Felton, the actors even formed feuding "cliques" of sorts. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint were in a Gryffindor group, and Tom Felton had a squad with his Slytherin co-actors Josh Herdman (Gregory Goyle) and Jamie Waylett (Vincent Crabbe). Felton shares hilarious details of how he and his friends would have fun, get into trouble, and even created several rap songs you can still find on the Internet.
In his book, Felton remembers one time on the set he still feels ashamed of. He describes how he once made fun of Emma Watson which visibly upset the actress. "I did feel like a bit of a dick, and rightly so," Felton writes. And though he apologized, Felton felt that this behavior may have divided the groups even further.
Fortunately, this ridiculous childish division only existed in the early days of Harry Potter and as actors grew older they all became great friends, as we've heard from numerous interviews over the years.