Neville, Ginny go Back to Hogwarts at Fan Expo in New Orleans

Matthew Lewis and Bonnie Wright at Fan Expo, by Alex Rawls

Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley remembered their experience on the set of the Harry Potter movies at Fan Expo.

In 2021, Fan Expo acquired eight Wizard World Comic Cons including New Orleans’, but if you attended, you likely didn’t notice any difference. Wizard World’s conventions have long been more pop culture than comics, and that was certainly the case last weekend at Morial Convention Center. They’re a far cry from the old comic conventions where fans pored over rows of dealers with long boxes full of back issues, and handful of comic creators signed autographs, and the primary nod to the world outside comics was a backroom that served as a theater to show sci-fi classics and Star Trek blooper reels. Cons have become a site for the gathering of the self-described nerd tribes, which is one of the most charming elements of the conventions. Each fandom silo respects the others.

This year Stranger Things consumed a lot of pop cultural real estate, and stars from the show got prime time on the interview stage. I was there for the Harry Potter panel with my daughter in her Ravenclaw robe. Matthew Lewis and Bonnie Wright were there, and while it’s tempting to sniff at Fan Expo presenting Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley instead of actors more central to the action in the series, Lewis and Wright had a useful perspective. What was life at Hogwarts like for those who didn’t carry the action?

Lewis remembered the hardest scene being in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when they ran through the Hall of Prophesy in a fight with the Death Eaters. For much of the movie, set builders really built the elaborate sets to give the young actors something to play off of, but that scene relied heavily on CGI, which made everything harder for inexperienced actors. In CGI-heavy scenes like those involving dragons in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, they had to watch a tennis ball hanging from a string and react as if it were a dragon or another magical creature.

For the Order of the Phoenix scene, the floor plan was drawn out on the floor to let the actors know where crowded shelves of prophesies would stand in the finished film. As hard as Lewis tried to get it right, he needed take after take because as a young teenager, he was still a bit gangly and ended up with his hand or an elbow in a space where a shelf would eventually be.

The set made Wright’s most challenging scene difficult in different ways. In the final scenes of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, she laid on the ground near death while Harry faced the basilisk, and 20 or so minutes of movie time took weeks to shoot. That meant that for weeks, she had to lay motionless on the hard, damp floor that set builders created as well.

The Harry Potter franchise relied on young actors, and just as the books document Harry moving through his teenage years into independence, the films document the growth of actors. “They cast me because that was me,” Lewis said. The role of Neville didn’t require acting chops he didn’t yet have. “I didn’t have to work until I was 16 or 17.” Wright echoed those thoughts. She was a lot like Ginny for the early movies, and at the point where the role required more of her, she’d had time to grow as an actor.

In her case, the books helped her play her part. Ginny got more time on the pages than she does on the screen, but the books were considered canon so she drew on them to help understand how to play scenes.

Unlike the cast of Stranger Things and some of the other Fan Expo guests, Lewis and Wright’s time on set is far enough in the past that they’re in a position to reflect on it. “I wish I would have slowed down and appreciated it more,” Lewis said. In 2006, they filmed a three-minute short, The Queen’s Lost Handbag in conjunction with Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday. The cast including Lewis were at Buckingham Palace when it was shown at the party, and like so many teenagers, he realized after the fact that moments like that don’t happen to everyone.

Enough time has also passed that they’ve lost cast members. Alan Rickman, who played Snape, died in 2016, and Robbie Coltrane who played Hagrid died in 2022. Wright remembers what a hard role Hagrid was because it took so many camera tricks to create the illusion that the 6’ 1” Coltrane was eight feet tall. “It was a disjointed role to play,” she remembers, but he was generous with his time on and off-screen.

“He called me Space Boy,” Lewis recalls, because they shared an interest in outer space. Even after shooting finished, they stayed in touch, with Coltrane periodically sending him space-related things he found.

In 2021, HBO Max filmed a cast reunion to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the start of the franchise. Return to Hogwarts features the cast reflecting on the experience, and according to Wright and Lewis, the affection the cast showed for each other in the documentary was real. “I still really like these people,” Lewis said. For that reason, Wright said she would return if asked for a screen adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. There are no plans for it yet, and Lewis is okay with that. He too would return, but more to see the others than because he wants to revisit Neville. “I’m not itching to do it,” he said.

That’s not necessarily the answer that fans want, but it’s a useful note to sound at Fan Expo.