We celebrated our two year birthday last Sunday and in those two years, we’ve not been invited to a Harry Potter premiere. This evening, all that changed as I got to attend the World Premiere for the seventh movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and it was quite an evening. I’ve been lucky enough to attend a few premieres before but the scale of this completely smashed everything else out of the park.
I arrived to collect my press pass to be told that Leicester Square was pretty much shut and that if you wanted to walk from one side of it to the other, you’d need to walk out of the square and back around it again.The rain came tumbling down and the wind was battering against the huge Potter banners that surrounded the press pens but the thousands upon thousands of fans that had turned out to see the star never let the weather get them down. People had travelled from all over the world to be in London this evening and the atmosphere was simply amazing. Warner Bros. had basically shut off the square to utilise the two biggest cinemas, The Odeon and The Empire. Both cinemas together have a capacity of over 3000 seats which just shows how big this event was – and that was just people attending the actual screening.
As I said above, this premiere was bigger than any I’d ever seen. The last world premiere I was at was Avatar, and Potter made that look small. There must have been around 100 film crews, press crews, online crews all desperate for a chat with some of the stars from the movie – of which there are many! I don’t think it really struck me before at how many stars there really are. We were presented with the list of people who were coming and usually, after the 1st page, you move onto the less known (or Z list if you will) celebrities that might be attending but not tonight! Oh no!
The problem with having so many press crews is that you won’t really get to chat with all the stars that you want to but this evening for me was amazing. I got to chat meet some acting legends including Warwick Davies, Jason Isaacs, Timothy Spall and Toby Jones. Then, made famous for their Potter parts I spoke with the twins, James and Oliver Phelps, Evanna Lynch and then completely by surprise I got to speak to Chloe Moretz who played Hit Girl in Kick-Ass who was very excited to be at the premiere.
During an interview with LoveFilm for Let Me In a few weeks ago, Chloe created a brand new word “Faboost” and today I asked her for another! After being put on the spot she came out with “Faboorst” which seemed a little tenuous but when you’re Hit Girl, you can make words up whenever you like!
Here’s the audio:
[audio:https://www.heyuguys.com/audio/harry_potter_deathly_hallows_premiere1/chloe_moretz_faboorst.mp3]
Another highlight was talking to Evanna Lynch who spoke about how much she loved her character of Luna Lovegood. She loved the fact that everyone loves her since she ‘doesn’t judge’ and how much she’d like to have her as a friend and how she ‘doesn’t worry what other people think about her’ but also how she ‘loves her bluntness’.
For me, talking to Warwick Davies was the highlight. The man was in Star Wars!!! Warwick spoke to me about working in all the movies and how he’ll be moving on to ‘Life’s Too Short’. I went on to ask what the experience was like coming to these massive events. He told me that he thought he’s get used to it but every time, ‘there’s more people here and more crazy and it just seems so fresh every time. It doesn’t feel like this is the seventh movie but there’s a lot of anticipation in this.’
I also got to speak with acting legend, Toby Jones who told me the evening was just completely ‘Overwhelming’ and he was visibility excited to be here at the premiere of the seventh movie. I then spoke to Matthew Lewis who plays Neville Longbottom and asked him if he realised that for the rest of his life, he’s going to be doing Potter appearances!
“It’s kind of odd. We were discussing it on the way here. My dad was saying in 10 years time they’ll do some kind of reunion and Justin Lee Collins will be trying to get us all get back together and it’ll be interesting to see where we all go.
I’ve had a few meetings recently, and hopefully I’ll be doing some theatre next year. It’ll be a tour. Not confirmed yet but fingers crossed.”
Unfortunately I didn’t get to chat with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson or Rupert Grint as they were all hurried away after the premiere started more than half an hour late but I got a few photos of Emma. It really was a crazy night with everyone being pulled from all over the place with so many different crews from all over the world.
This evening was an experience that i’ll never forget. Being at the biggest premiere of the biggest movie franchise of all time was just special and I’m so grateful to Warner Bros. for inviting us along.
I’ve placed the photos that I took from this evening below. Not all of them are great I’m afraid but I got some nice ones of Emma Watson. You can click them all below to enlarge.
