by The cast of the Harry Potter films was absolutely jammed full of the best of British and Irish acting talent. Including the likes of Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helena Bonham Carter, and Gary Oldman, many great stars made significant contributions to the movie version of the beloved novels.
The list of talent on offer in the film really is endless, and the younger members of the cast, like Harry himself, Daniel Radcliffe, were afforded the opportunity to work closely with some of the greatest actors British and Irish cinema had ever known. Some of the older actors looked to exercise their superiority over their juniors in a touching, lighthearted way, such as this prank that Gambon played on Radcliffe.
On the DVD extras, Radcliffe sat down with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint and recalled the incident. “There was one time where, in this room actually, Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman, and I think Alfonso Cuarón was co-ordinating it, took the opportunity to play a practical joke on me,” he said.
Watson said that the prank was “really, really funny” before Radcliffe replied, “For you”. The joke took place when the cast had been filming a scene where the students of Hogwarts are sleeping in the Great Hall with Dumbledore coming in to wax lyrical about the nature of dreams as he was so often wont to do, but Gambon had a trick up his sleeve.
The clip of the prank sees Gambon speak his lines standing in front of Alan Rickman’s Professor Snape before several fart noises are heard to varying degrees of laughter from the rest of the cast. “We’d just finished a take; it’s taken ages to get it,” Radcliffe explained of the incident. “They had put a fart machine into my sleeping bag, and Michael Gambon had actually been pressing it during the take, I found out.”
The moment was one of the camaraderie that seemed to be present throughout the production of all the Harry Potter films. However, it was one that seemed to be a particular nuisance to Radcliffe for personal reasons, with Alfonso Cuarón explaining, “It was very good because it was a bunch of sleeping bags, and Dan [asked] us to have his sleeping bag next to this particular girl that he fancied.”
Following the death of Gambon, Radcliffe had penned a touching tribute. “He was silly, irreverent and hilarious,” the actor said of his Harry Potter co-star. “He loved his job but never seemed defined by it. He was an incredible story and joke-teller, and his habit of blurring the lines of fact and fiction when talking to journalists meant that he was also one of the most entertaining people with whom you could ever wish to do a press junket. I’m so sad to hear he has passed, but I am so grateful for the fact that I am one of the lucky people who got to work with him.”
