While in Adelaide, Matt Lewis talked to The Iris about going to fan conventions, his work on the Potter films and why he thinks the Harry Potter films resonate with so many people!
“The phenomenon that was Harry Potter is still beguiling to me,” Lewis admits. “How huge it was and the fact that I’m on the other side of the world and people are fans, it’s very humbling and very spectacular. You think that eventually people will get bored of it and will die out, but it doesn’t! Generation after generation of kids just keep falling in love with it and I think it’s testament to what Jo wrote and that universe and how vivid that world is.”
On the experience of being in the films, Matt said:
“It’s a unique thing we did that I don’t think anyone could recreate it,” he says. “The fact is that none of us had to go through that on our own, we got to experience it together and it’s something we’ll always have. We’ll always have Paris, as it were.”
“I’m an incredibly lucky human being to have been a part of that.” Lewis continues. “It’s just something I can’t really quantify. I feel very privileged and the fact that I’m still working five, six years later, is because of those movies. My career now is completely based on what I did in those films and I’m playing characters that are so wildly different; I’ve got something coming out next year where I’m about as far from Neville as you could get, he’s pretty horrible, actually! It all comes off the back of that and as you say, the unique experience we went through. It’s nice because everyone is so lovely and so fantastic and I still have so many friends from those films, whether they’re the adult guys at the time, [Alan] Rickman or Robbie Coltrane, or Dan [Radcliffe] and Emma [Watson] and all those guys – everyone is such a close bunch, it’s nice to still have that.”
Matt Lewis also discusses why he thinks people love the Harry Potter books and films so much. We think he hit the nail on the head with this one, beautifully said.
“With Harry Potter, it’s that the universe lives parallel to our world – it’s always nice when you’re a young kid and school might be a bit shitty or you don’t know what you want to do with your life, to suddenly find out that you’re meant for something else, there’s something about you that’s a little bit special that no one else will understand. There’s something about that that is amazing and I think the thing about Harry Potter is that it keeps that dream alive. No matter how old you get, there’s always that dream of one day having someone come along and go, ‘You were right the whole time, you are special, and behind this brick wall, there’s this whole world you’re about to go to. You’re a bloody hero there.’ When I think about it as a fantasy world, that’s what I think is the most attractive thing about it.”
