Finding Harry: The Craft Behind the Magic (2026)

[bunniefuu]

Some stories change us.

Please travel in the front

six coaches only.

Some stories define us.

But few stories live with us.

And, action!

Quite like the boy who lived.

Soon to be told by HBO Max...

...like never before.

Harry's story from J.K. Rowling's

beloved book series

is a truly immersive tale...

requiring incredible dedication

to realize this mesmerizing,

almost limitless magical world.

To create a place so rich, complex,

and expansive,

building it in our world

would be impossible...

until the true wizards get to work.

The Harry Potter stories

are this extraordinary phenomenon

from 30 years ago,

for young people.

But it struck a chord

with people of all ages.

And to reimagine the Harry Potter canon...

to let it breathe,

to tell a story in eight episodes

rather than a single two-hour movie,

to go down all the wonderful rabbit holes.

The story is there,

but we get to enact all the things

that you know are going on in the wings,

but you don't see them.

You wait forever to do something

that means that much to people.

And I think this really will.

And they have done a brilliant job

of selecting this extraordinary ensemble.

We stopped counting at 40,000.

Yeah. It wasn't a good use

of our time at that point

to count, but we watched all of them.

Yeah. We're looking for a child

who he means so much

to people in different ways.

And so, you are looking for a kid

who perhaps on the face of it

seems quite ordinary,

but is ultimately very extraordinary.

We wanted to make sure

that all kids in the UK

could audition by submitting

their first auditions online.

And then we went to Manchester,

Scotland, Ireland, and...

- Cardiff.

- Cardiff, Wales.

When we were auditioning children,

we knew it was gonna be a long process.

We started with Harry, Ron, and Hermione,

and they are really good friends.

And so, it was a really exciting challenge

to find three kids

that you would believe as friends

with these very strong,

different personalities.

These are all ordinary kids, you know?

But they are all extraordinary.

There's magic in all of them.

We saw Alastair in Manchester,

and he was just funny and charming

from the word "go." Yeah.

This is him doing his...

- His story. Poem.

- ...his little story.

Mother doesn't want a dog.

She's making a mistake.

'Cause more than a dog,

I think she will not want this snake.

That was first day of Alastair.

And then, Arabella in London.

"Hermione, lack of filter

from being an only child.

"Her superpower is

her emotional intelligence.

She's got main-character energy."

So, this is Arabella's first audition.

- Yeah.

- So, she did the poem Invictus.

It matters not how strait the gate,

how charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Hermione has to be playful,

so we got her in to do a scene

where she's talking to her parents

about Harry and Ron.

And she got the giggles

and did little snorts,

and that's the take we used

to show them that she's playful.

So, you're constantly using

bits of the audition

that you know is gonna help the kid

when you show it to the director

and the showrunner.

So, Arabella's snort was quite crucial

- in her casting process.

- Yeah.

We met Dominic in Glasgow.

What did we have about Harry?

"He's skeptical of the adult world.

He's got a vulnerability

and a melancholy."

- And a solitary quality to him.

- A solitary quality.

- He's grown up alone.

- He's grown up alone,

and he-- survival is his thing.

Artful Dodger, not Oliver Twist.

It's basically, find an incredible actor,

- age ten.

- Basically, yeah.

- That was the brief.

- Yeah, yeah.

He has so many different qualities.

So many different qualities.

Dominic came in and his piece was a poem

about his weekend

that he'd written himself,

and it was rhyming.

And we thought, "He's so interesting."

"My Weekend" by Dominic.

So, started off Saturday morning,

I had a football game to play,

and I can tell you, it went my way.

Didn't really have anything

to do after that,

so I just slept the rest of the day.

Dom just had this sort of

quiet confidence in himself.

- Who do you live with?

- Hey, I live with my mum,

my dad, and my two sisters.

- Okay.

- And my dog.

And have you done any acting before?

I did Macbeth in January.

And were you one of Macduff's sons?

Yeah, I was.

Oh, you got k*lled, unfortunately.

- Yeah.

- Sorry to hear that.

Okay. That's great.

I really feel confident in these kids.

I think they're incredible.

In a show of this scale,

it's easy to get lost.

You can go to the Great Hall, it's huge.

You can go to the Quidditch pitch,

it's massive.

You can go to Diagon Alley.

And we go back to the sets

and we're revisiting them,

adding a bit of detail.

Sometimes, for example,

I'll go to the Gryffindor common room

or to the tower,

and you're in there on your own,

and you're looking around

and you look at the noticeboard

and you're looking at

every little bit of detail

on McGonagall's desk, of the books,

on the spines, and you-- it's goosebumps.

The volume of this is just so fun...

to be able to build at a scale like this.

It's just a designer's dream

to play in a sandbox that's this big.

We're trying to get in the joy

and the playfulness

of what it means to be a magical kid.

When the first Harry Potter book came out,

it really felt so novel and exciting.

I think everyone had that

shared experience

of thinking what an incredible world,

it would be so great to touch.

And so, we're trying to capture

those moments of discovery

that you find within the books.

We want you to have

that same experience here.

But we are adding a level

of world-building

that is even beyond what

the audience is familiar with.

Harry's introduction

to the physical space

of the wizarding world

starts with the Leaky Cauldron.

And eventually, we come out the back

and go into our Diagon Alley set.

The elements that we see

are all things that we would recognize,

but how they combine and form

is gonna be something

really new and exciting.

Privet Drive in our Muggle world,

we really wanted to be rooted in reality.

And part of that, I think,

for someone as a fan

and an audience member,

is when your Muggle world

is rooted in a reality

that we're all familiar with,

it makes the excitement

of the wizarding world

just being beyond our reach

all the more enticing.

There's really a ton of thought

that's going into this,

so that for the die-hard fans,

we're trying to land it.

We've created these spaces

that I think are gonna

give everybody a lot of joy

to kind of be in and experience.

It's just so exciting

that everybody is so game

to make these things come alive.

Walking into the Great Hall

that first time, where you go,

"It's like walking into a cathedral."

It was so magical.

It's so huge. It's so beautiful.

And the entrance

of the children coming in,

the first-years coming in,

and then bringing them into that hall,

was possibly my favorite set

in that sense.

It was just so iconic

and so, kind of, symbolic of,

"Right, here we go.

"Whole new bunch of kids,

into this world we go.

"And here we are in Hogwarts, and welcome,

and a whole new mystery

is unfolding for you."

And sometimes,

you're in your dressing room

and you'll be sitting there,

and then suddenly you hear this

expl*si*n of people outside

as the children run in.

You're thinking about your work

or whatever,

and they've just got their own thing

with whatever it is that's going on,

the way children do, it's just--

it's a real energy.

Sometimes on a really tiring day,

I always go, "Close your eyes,

open them again,

and look around. Wow!"

You walk onto a set and you think, "Wow!"

And it just ups your game.

'Cause it's all just so beautiful.

Beautiful.

In the initial conversations

with Mark and Francesca

about the core values of our show,

there was this kind of inherent desire

to be rooted in naturalism.

Also, in this idea at the core

of Harry Potter,

nature is the root of magic.

And so, magical realism,

rooting things in principles

that we find in nature

and the phenomenon of the natural world.

If we could harness those things,

that's what magic is.

These ideas of naturalism

being this core principle

within the wizarding world,

is something that we're integrating

into a lot of our sets.

We have to bring

the natural world to them.

And to think that I'm at the helm of this,

it really is incredible.

This project is so exciting

that there's so much overlap

and play between different departments

to really capture

these concepts and themes

and express them

on so many different levels.

As we designed these practical

and visual effects,

we wanted there to be

a deeply rooted logic

to what was happening.

Even though magic is not logical,

for us, it's more of these,

like, consequences of magic

that we're interested in.

For every expression of magic,

we're trying to do that critical analysis

of how does this tie back into

what we're saying magic actually is.

And we really wanted

to celebrate it as a moment

to do things a little bit differently.

This is one of the most

exciting conversations

I've had as a designer,

diving into the science of something

that should be unexplainable.

The joy of working on a project like this

is that we have so many really creative

and exciting department heads.

It really is such a pleasure to work

with such high-level craftsmen

who also are genuinely excited about this.

I can proudly say you've done a good job.

- Thank you.

- A very good job.

- Means a lot. Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Appreciate it.

My father actually designed and painted

the very first Quidditch box

from the first film.

And here I am, 26 years later,

painting the new Quidditch box

for the HBO production.

I actually worked on Harry Potter three

and four film, 25 years ago.

And I was actually a trainee

to some of the guys

that are working here.

Every creature we build

within Creature Effects,

whether it's an owl, a rat,

whether it's a creature or a human being,

all starts with the same process.

Basically, extensive research into nature.

Observing and looking

at how an owl might move.

They just look incredible.

And it's our job to try

and copy that movement

and repeat that with

the use of animatronics

and creature effects.

You can see within the animatronics,

you've got all these pivot points,

and pieces of metal and plastic,

and servo motors.

And our job is to try

and make that feel organic.

We are looking at, essentially,

the culmination of a lot of teamwork.

These are some early prototypes we did

of how we would create

this incredible neck movement

that you have within owls,

how they move so much,

this almost 360 movement,

the up and down, the turning,

that we put together in fabrication.

And then, we hand these over

to the wonderful feather team

to do all their beautiful work-over

so that we can fill these voids

and have amazing feathers

that all glide and move,

and create that incredible

motion that an owl's neck has.

So, we then insert each

and every feather individually

in the net, and glue it down.

And it's about 36,000 feathers per owl.

And we made about ten owls for this show.

Because technology's moved on,

and we've actually got stronger

and faster motors

that we can actually fit inside,

you can actually pick the rat neck up

and push it around and bully it around.

When Ron holds the animatronic,

it actually pushes it aside

rather than it feeling

like a stuffed Scabbers.

Dan has actually put that

into this animatronic here

where, as you push the feet down,

it actually compresses,

and I can actually move this around.

You can see here.

So, it doesn't feel too robotic and rigid,

which I think really helps

the performance of,

of a young boy who's probably

never held an animatronic before

in his life.

And then, of course, when you put it

into the sort of context of,

you know, down on the floor like that,

it's really believable.

And we also made a biting Scabbers

that Charlotte's gonna bring in now.

Put your finger in his mouth

and wiggle it around.

That's it.

There you go. Thank you very much.

This is the Dugbog, which is a character

that hasn't been seen

in any of the films before.

It's based on a toad that has

movements that we've taken

directly from nature,

from toads, where the eyes pull in,

retract inside.

We've got a mechanical tongue.

Nose movement, nostrils.

We added this detail on top

so the kids could actually

snap the backs,

the back off and pull these mollusks off

so it doesn't feel damaging

for the creature.

It's actually an amazing

opportunity for us

to all come together,

all departments, all disciplines,

whether it was Creature Effects,

Special Effects,

Visual Effects, Model Making, Set Deck.

We also created these flobberworms

and characters like this

that we didn't tell the kids

that we're actually gonna be able to

pick them up and slime.

And we had these fire crabs

that was actually working

closely with Special Effects,

and these two will actually blast fire

out of their backsides at each other.

So, we've got a self-contained

animatronic here

where all the motors are inside,

and someone's actually

operating that remotely.

I'm shaking right now,

just being in this room.

Like this is crazy.

I was the right age

and it was always there.

It was something I really--

I really bonded with my siblings over.

I think my cousin

first introduced me to it.

So, we used to,

I mean, we used to run home

from primary school

and change out of

our primary-school clothes

and into our Hogwarts robes.

We're set in 1991,

and we did a full study of what

people were wearing in 1991,

and we tried to make

the Muggles feel as true

as we possibly could make them.

We've really sort of drawn out,

you know, certain--

tried to sort of create real contrasts.

The Muggle palette is pastel-orientated,

very cold colors,

and there's a big emphasis

on synthetic fabrics.

As you can see here,

it's really the period of shell suits.

We call them shell suits.

They're these crinkly tracksuit tops.

I think in terms of finding Harry's look,

he lives in a world where everyone

is following the fashions.

He hasn't ever had the luxury

of choosing his clothes.

He's given these old castoffs by Petunia,

which are Dudley's old clothes.

His clothes just hang off him

and they're just grayed out.

Actually, everything that he wears,

we found original--

Beth found original pieces,

which we then meticulously recreated.

We're finding real clothes,

sort of trawling many vintage yards

and wholesale scrapyards

and just finding it.

And the amount we've amassed

as we've costumed thousands.

And the more we found,

this palette came naturally together.

These are the colors of 1991.

We want to time travel.

We get to dive in and out

of different time frames,

different styles of costuming,

and you can't time travel

if they're not exactly the right thing.

Our uniforms are all made of British wool,

organic cotton, shell buttons,

wooden buttons, Scottish tartan.

Natural cloth is something

that is almost rare.

It's quite a radical act

just to wear a jumper

that's made of sheep's wool.

Even though, you know,

we live in a country

that's like full of sheep.

For magical people, we had

to find how we present them,

that feels somehow a little bit "other."

What Francesca and Mark really wanted us

to be bringing into the design,

was with lots of nature.

That when we decided to use

all these very imperfect,

natural processes,

like leaf-printing, like hand-painting,

- like marbling.

- Marbling.

When you print with leaves,

there is this natural,

magical process that happens.

You don't know what you're going

to get depending on the leaf,

you just have to go with what you get.

For Dumbledore,

we wanted to use leaf-printing

because we wanted to do this

camo fabric for him to wear.

And we wanted to create

the sense of this natural,

immediate unruly process.

It's the imperfection

that brings the beauty.

It's not kind of like a high fantasy.

It's really rooted in "the real."

And I think that would hopefully

make people think, oh, maybe...

- "Maybe it's real."

- "Maybe it is around that corner," or...

- Yeah.

- ...look at a person

walking down the street, and think, "Oh."

I remember, we kept saying,

"I've just seen a magical person."

- I remember that.

- "I've just seen a magical person."

And we were photographing people,

like on the tube or the bus,

that we'd identify

as sort of a "magical person."

And so, it's this idea

that magical people do exist

and they are around,

and we wanted that

to be within all of them.

Just a sort of...

combination of elements

that just made you look.

And by complete contrast,

we have created an inky, moody...

natural palette for the magical people.

So, that's one way that

we've created a dichotomy.

Everything is rooted in reality.

Our Dumbledore, he is a little bit

like Edwardian gentleman,

because that's what we thought,

knowing how old he is, we kind of work out

that his height, his heyday.

A little bit of Scottish tweed here,

embroidered, as you can see,

in a very unruly, not-too-perfect way.

I mean, I love Harry Potter

because I picked up the book

when I had my children.

And I got really into reading the books

with my son Eric, who just loved them.

He could really project himself

into the story,

and I think it was so good for him,

and I could see how much he was loving it.

And we were loving it together.

Our thing where we'd sit down

together at night

and read very intricate stories

with quite complicated plots

and lots and lots of things happening.

And he said to me,

"Mummy, is there a school

that I can go to like this?"

And...

And I--

I thought, "I need to find this school.

And if I can't find it,

I need to try and create this school."

It definitely feels like

a big responsibility.

I think it's a big responsibility

to get it right, isn't it?

To honor what has gone before,

but to hopefully, like, find more detail.

I think I was literally the same age

as the kids in the book, you know?

I think the first one came out in '97.

I was seven.

And I was definitely at the age

where, like, the books

were still coming out

when I was at school.

So, it was actually really intense.

I remember reading those books,

and you wouldn't be able

to talk to your mates at all.

Because, like, if someone was

reading faster than you were,

they were gonna tell you

what was gonna happen.

And like, these stories

are so important at that age,

it wasn't worth, like,

the conversation with your mates.

At that age, you imagine yourself

being a kid at Hogwarts,

or you imagine yourself

being in Harry's shoes.

I remember on one day,

I came in to see Mark,

and they were sh**ting the scene

on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

And just walking in

and seeing the real train,

it was like being thrown into the book.

It was like being thrown into it,

it was real.

So, as you can see,

though the world of Harry Potter

is already legendary,

its legacy is still growing.

As a new generation discovers its magic,

an exciting new era is upon us.

I knew that while I did

the first season of Harry Potter,

I would be turning 80 years old.

That meant that I would age to about 88

before it was all over.

This is an extremely difficult

thing to contemplate.

They're just an amazing ensemble.

All of them, Arabella,

and Alastair,

and Dom.

- What you think? You excited?

- Yeah.

Do you want to come and sit down?

And they all adore each other.

I'm really excited to see how they grow

and how their artistry grows

and what kind of people they grow into.

They're gonna grow up in this.

And...

And I'm gonna grow old with them.

Theoretically, we could be working

for many years together

and they'll be young adults by then.

We want them to grow up thinking, "Wow!

"It might have been hard,

it might have been difficult,

"it might have been tiring,

but boy, it was good

"and so glad I did it.

It was so exciting to be a part of it."

And here we are.

What better place to end this journey

into the heart of Harry Potter

than where he begins

his journey to Hogwarts?

Here, we're surrounded

by both unbelievable scale,

along with the little things

that make it all feel so real.

Talking about mind-blowing detail,

come and have a look at this,

a tiny taste of what's to come.

So, all aboard.

You might wanna hold your ears.

It's about to get very loud!

This feels like my cue.

So, my Dad was a prop master

on all of the eight original movies.

And I'm here to carry on the legacy.

The next generation of fans

being something very important to me

because my son is a big Harry Potter fan.

And so, I cannot let the little guys down,

cannot let the new generation

of fans down.

I know it's really important.

My family worked

on the original Harry Potter

and I get to carry on the legacy.

What a dream.

I met my wife on the third Harry Potter,

and now my son works for me.

So, it's been our life, really.

Well, I started my Harry Potter

experience in 1999,

and 27 years later, I'm still here.

I remember the first day

that I was filming,

we were on set on Privet Drive,

and we had Harry's owl with him,

and I just sort of looked around

and it was such a "pinch me" moment.

There's been too many

good moments to count,

to be honest,

this has been a year of highlights.