Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Harry Potter und der Orden des Phönix
Interview with James and Oliver Phelps
Phelps Twins
James Phelps and Oliver Phelps are twins and they played, quite obviously, the Weasley-Twins in all the Harry Potter films. Also in the fifth film about the young wizard the two lads from Birmingham play Fred and George Weasley, fooling around all the time. On the occasion of the Swiss Premiere of Harry Potter 5 OutNow.CH was able to have an interview with the twins. As it is pretty normal, that twins look alike, act alike and sometimes also sound quite alike, it wasn't possible to distinguish between the two guys ... so the answers to the questions are a mixture of James and Oliver thounghts. Enjoy.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache
OutNow.CH (ON): How was the Swiss Premiere here in Zurich?
Phelps Twins (PT): It was very good, very wet. But it was cool, the people still stayed out and that makes us feel very welcome in Zurich in Switzerland. Yeah on the whole it went on very well. Afterwards we had a good meal in a quite nice restaurant and then we went to a local club. That was quite cool ... yeah we really enjoyed it.
ON: You played in all Harry Potter-Films ... which shooting was the best in general?
With ginger ...
PT: They have all been really good fun. It felt like the time was flying by. It was a nine month film and it shot by really really quickly. I don't know what to say, there's not a favorite shooting for me. But we had quite a great time in the fourth one, because the cast was so much bigger. But also in the fifth one we just had such a great time doing that.
ON: How was it to be on the same set with famous actors like Alan Rickman?
PT: When you walk in and you see people who you have known - especially in the first film - you see people you've grown up with, like the Die_Hard movie with Alan Rickman. Or for example Judy Walters, playing your mother, who is a huge person in Britain - they're legends of the entertainment industry. That's quite surreal, but they were really cool and they did give you tips like how to do a scene. That's better than any acting-lesson I've ever heard of.
ON: You and your brother look totally alike, you are both actors - where is the major difference between the two of you?
PT: Well, we support very rival football teams, All Sports Aston and Birmingham City. That's quite a big difference, definitely when it comes to the match - a very big difference! I think also just the way we go about things: While Oliver is quite a bit more of a person who likes to have his things done, I'm more the person who's a bit more laid back.
ON: How many tricks did you play on the Potter-Set? Did you stand in for the other guy, pretending to be your brother?
PT: Yeah, we did one or two ... but a few films ago, Rupert came back from Japan, he had a spy camera and we put it in a pack of cards. We caught someone of the cast dancing on his own and we rang him, asked him: "Are you having a good time?" He didn't get it and always asked "why, why?" ... On the last one, with the make-up girl Grace we had a prank war going - we had that war going with the hair and make up department and pulled the ultimate one, we rang up one of the new girls Grace and said with a different voice: "That's whoever from a car park, you have to pay a 1000 pounds for whatever action ..." we kept the whole thing going for about 6-7 minutes and recorded it as well and then we kind of showed it to everyone [laughing].
ON: In your real life have you also been such a well organized twin-team fooling around all the time?
... or brown hair.
PT: Well, I wouldn't say we're as bad as Fred and George are, certainly when we were at school, there were times when I would have loved to blow up the school, like they do, but we did have quite often a laugh. I think we got boundaries whereas Fred and George don't seem to have any. I don't know if it is apparent in the movie, but we're great mates with a lot of the cast-members. We are really good friends, we know what makes each other tick and how to wind someone up, how to make them laugh.
ON: Can we expect to see one of you alone in a movie or do you prefer to work together?
PT: No, we haven't got set things up that we'll only do as brothers or anything. I think it would be quite cool to do something individually. We don't say it's either both of us or none of us ... it would be good though, if we did individual things.
ON: Do you often go to the cinema?
PT: Yeah we go quite a lot. But I'm a member of BAFTA, so they send us DVDs through of forthcoming films to vote on. So we see all these films before they are to see at the cinema. Which is nice, so we have lots of film nights around our house. But we also do like going to the cinema, especially at this time of year when you have all the major blockbusters coming out, and you're like "I want to see this one and that one...". We're quite fortunate as well, because there is kind of a 24-hour-cinema near us. So sometimes on a Friday night we go to a late night of whatever.
ON: How does a typical cinema-night look like?
PT: We go there with friends. We have quite a lot of friends who like going to cinemas and seeing stuff. It's quite cool, because sometimes if a certain film comes out someone wants to see and some of the others think "Don't know..." we go with going a hunch. But 9 out of 10 times you come out seeing a film which you wouldn't have expected to see, but you're really glad you did.
ON: Which is your favourite feature movie?
Phelps & Phelps
PT: I'm not really sure, there are so many different ones flying about at the moment, but one that stands in my mind is like Casino Royal, the new James Bond Film, that one was really good or Batman Begins, they were filming that while we were filming the fourth film. So we saw bits of both of them but we didn't really know what's going on until you see it on the final version. But then, Happy Gilmore or Forrest Gump are very good movies, as well. And, to hark back to Batman Returns: That was pretty cool - especially when we saw them filming and building the bat cave.
ON: How was the casting for you? Did you already know what role you are going to play or did you just go to an audition for any part of the potter-movie?
PT: I read the books before, so we obviously knew what we're going to play. I knew what Fred and George were like and we're kind of related to them in way we're being twins. So we went to an audition for every single part of the films, there were loads of little kids there with glasses with no lenses in, with sprayed ginger hair for Ron and there were all the actors from the drama schools with their massive portfolio. We turned up with a Polaroid picture and: "Hi!" [Laughing] But it's quite funny like quite a lot of the cast did exactly the same frisk, because it was also the first thing they've done.
ON: The Weasleys
PT: Ginger
ON: Emma Watson
PT: Very outgoing
ON: Switzerland
PT: Roger Federer
ON: English Food
PT: Fish and chips
ON: Muggles
PT: Me
ON: Magic
PT: David Blaine
ON: Internet
PT: MSN
ON: OutNow.CH
PT: A very cool Swiss Website
ON: Thank you very much for your time and enjoy your stay in Zurich.
