It’s now been nineteen years since the Harry Potter franchise made the leap from the page to the big screen. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (or Philosopher’s Stone) set the wheels in motion for one of the most popular and lucrative movie series of all time, eventually spanning eight films and concluding in 2011 with The Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
To celebrate the anniversary, most of the cast got together for an online reunion to reflect on the years that have passed and how Harry Potter continues to affect their lives. The event was hosted by Tom Felton, with Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Evanna Lynch, Mark Williams, James and Oliver Phelps, Jason Isaacs, Bonnie Wright and Alfred Enoch all joining (sadly, Emma Watson couldn’t make it).
During the chat, Grint (who recently broke the record for fastest time to reach 1 million Instagram followers) opened up on why he earned a bad reputation on set and was given the nickname “Go Again Grint.” According to him, he used to burst into laughter during serious scenes, requiring countless takes to get it right.
“I remember on Potter it would always be the most inappropriate scenes, like Dumbledore’s funeral was a particularly bad one. For some reason, I found that absolutely hilarious. And yeah, once you start laughing, it’s very hard to stop. I had a particularly bad reputation, they used to call me Go Again Grint because I could never do anything without doing it like 20 times.”
This seems to have been happening right from the start, too. One of the first scenes to be shot was Harry and Ron meeting aboard the Hogwarts Express, but Grint and Radcliffe couldn’t stop giggling, so they had to separate them and shoot each character separately.
The reunion was a touching way to mark the anniversary and a rare unambiguously happy moment for Wizarding World fans. After all, 2020 has been a rough year what with J.K. Rowling’s transphobia, Johnny Depp being booted off Fantastic Beasts 3 and the film being delayed due to COVID-19.
Next year will be Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone 20th anniversary and, as the pandemic will hopefully be over by then, we can expect a bigger celebration. As Radcliffe said:
“My first thoughts are that this is but a mere preview of the nostalgia we’ll be immersed in next year when it hits 20 years since the first film was released. I feel like we’ll be doing a lot of reminiscing probably in various forms next year. It feels insane that that much time has gone by. It seems impossible that all that time has passed.”
It does indeed. You can check out the entire Harry Potter reunion over on YouTube.