Kenneth Branagh Remembers a Night Out with Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman on “Chamber of Secrets”
The Hogwarts professors did, in fact, have a life after curfew — and Kenneth Branagh was there for one of the good ones.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Branagh — Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — described a night at a hotel outside Cheltenham during the production’s shoot at Gloucester Cathedral, which stood in for the Hogwarts corridors. Richard Harris was the one telling the stories, he recalled, with Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Miriam Margolyes and David Bradley around the tables and a generous supply of drink involved. Branagh called it one of the great privileged, daft nights of his life, and said of the company: “You felt this massive weight of experience.”
He also described the welcome he got from the British crew and cast — a bundle of introductory paperwork he compared to the size of a telephone directory, covering seemingly every craft and technical department in the industry. His word for it was immense.
The story lands differently now than it would have in 2002. Harris died that year, Rickman in 2016, and Smith in 2024 — three of the people at those tables are gone, and that room can never be assembled again. Branagh’s account was reported by Screen Daily and picked up by Cinemablend.
There is a neat piece of symmetry to it, too: Lockhart is heading back to Hogwarts for HBO’s second season with Nicholas Hoult in the turquoise robes, meaning the role Branagh played that summer belongs to someone else now.
Which of the original Hogwarts staff performances do you miss most? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to follow along for more Harry Potter news.
Source: Cinemablend
