What’s it like to face the daunting task of playing the three most famous characters and friends from the “Harry Potter” Wizarding World?
Variety recently spoke with young British actors Frankie Treadaway (14), Max Lester (13) and Arabella Stanton (11), who provide the voices of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, respectively, in the first three “Harry Potter” audiobooks from Audible. The upshot: All three — who are already accomplished actors with notable credits — were very excited indeed about the opportunity to portray the kid wizards.
Treadaway, asked what his reaction was when he found out he landed the role of Harry Potter in the first three books, said it was one of “just pure amazement, to be honest. With such a famous character, associating you with him is just mind-blowing.”
Stanton said for her, it was “a pinch-me moment. It’s like, ‘Have I actually got this?’ It was just so amazing when I found out.” (Stanton subsequently landed the part of Hermione in the forthcoming HBO series.) And Lester confessed that his first thought was, “I don’t believe this is real… And still now, I can’t believe that I’m a part of this, and I’m in this amazing role with an amazing cast.”
Are they actual friends the way that Harry, Hermione and Ron are in the “Harry Potter” books? “Well, yeah, of course we are!” said Treadaway. “I think we’ve formed a bond over this period of time when we were doing this.”
The first audiobook in the series, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, Nov. 4, exclusively on Audible, with each of the remaining six releasing monthly worldwide. (A second group of actors — Jaxon Knopf, Rhys Mulligan and Nina Barker-Francis — will voice Harry, Ron and Hermione, respectively, for books 4-7.) The cast of 200-plus actors for the Audible “Harry Potter” books includes Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore and Matthew Macfadyen as Voldemort.
For Treadaway, Stanton and Lester, the amount of time they spent in the recording studio for Audible’s “Harry Potter: The Full Cast Audio Editions” was relatively short — about a week or so to cover all three books. Most of the time, they were not together: They recorded their lines separately with other actors speaking the other parts, but the trio did come together for some of the group scenes.
To prepare for the parts, the three said they watched (or rewatched) the Warner Bros. movies starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint. Stanton said she read the original books to understand Hermione’s state of mind at different parts in the story. “I think Hermione can be portrayed in many different ways,” said Stanton. “She’s quite a well-to-do girl — and she is very smart and is very keen to learn.”
For Lester, one challenge was adopting Ron Weasley’s rural English accent. That entailed “getting your vowels longer and making your L’s longer and your R’s longer,” he said. “It was all new to me and it was weird, but I definitely got used to it. And I don’t know, sometimes in conversations now, I kind of slip them in there because it sounds right.”
Lester’s favorite part of the project was recording the scenes in which Ron was eating: Producers prepared and served the actors real food during the sessions. “It was so real!” he said. “It was even better if you did more takes.”
The producers of the “Harry Potter” audiobooks also provide props for the actors to, like the characters’ magic wands and Hogwarts robes. “If you had your wand, if you were doing a spell, you could practice doing that movement,” Stanton said. “And I really think all the tiny little things that they gave us really helped me personally to bring Hermione to life.”
Treadaway, as he was recording, was cognizant of Radcliffe’s line deliveries from the movies. “I definitely did bear in mind what other previous things of Harry Potter were, just so people still have that familiarity with the character,” he said. But he also added “my spin on it.”
Through the experience, Stanton gained an appreciation of the different skills required for voice acting vs. acting for stage or screen. With the former, “you have to focus more on your voice and really portray your character through your voice with more emotion,” she said. “It’s quite hard because you have to sort of not over-enunciate, but really have nice and good diction whilst you’re speaking so that the mic picks up everything you’re saying.”
Their families, of course, have known about their casting in the Audible “Harry Potter” series for months. But the actors weren’t allowed to tell their friends or anyone else about the gigs until they were announced in early August. “When I did finally get round to telling my friends… they were properly impressed,” said Lester. “But when I [couldn’t] tell them, it was quite tough because I really wanted to say what I was doing!”
Treadaway’s West End stage credits include performances in “Mary Poppins,” “Elf,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Matilda the Musical,” while his TV credits include LJP Ltd.’s “My Lady Jane.” Lester’s acting career has included roles in “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (Marvel), as well as stage roles in “Les Misérables” and “Leopoldstadt” in the West End and animation roles on Nickelodeon’s “Best Birthday Ever” and “Barbapapa.” Stanton played the title role in “Matilda the Musical” in the West End at the age of 9, before joining the original cast of “Starlight Express” (London) in the part of Control shortly after she turned 10.
Meanwhile, none of the three have met J.K. Rowling, whose Pottermore Publishing is co-producing “Harry Potter: The Full Cast Audio Editions” with Audible. But they would welcome the chance.
“I love her writing. I love the books,” said Stanton. “Hopefully we get to meet her in the future.”
Pictured above, l. to r.: Max Lester, Frankie Treadaway, Arabella Stanton
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