IGN FilmForce's Steven Horn was invited to the Leavesden, UK set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban late last year to cover the highly-anticipated next film installment in author J.K. Rowling's masterful tale of the young magician. We're going to start rolling out our full reports next week, but, for now, here's a little conversation with the three young stars of the film: Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley).

Q: [The Prisoner of Azkaban] is obviously the first time Harry is very angry; he has a lot of murderous, truly murderous, thoughts. How did you deal with that with your own experiences?

DANIEL RADCLIFFE: I can't say I've ever actually properly wanted to kill somebody. But, you know, everybody has moments when they get very angry, I think you sort of tackle that. I listen to a lot of music, which helped in that respect.

RUPERT GRINT: Scary music.

RADCLIFFE: Yeah, scary music. I like loads of different guitar music. But it's not like it's horrible people actually physically trying to kill other people. The thing about this one is that not only is he so angry, but he also has to deal with some truly horrific, horrific things. He actually hears his mother screaming as she is murdered, and it doesn't really get much worse than that, so there was a lot of kind of preparing for that to be done. That's the only really proper preparation story I can think of. My dad grew up in Northern Ireland and he grew up when all the troubles in Northern Ireland were really kind of going on. And there was a man across the street from him who was murdered by the UDA (Ulster Defense Association). My dad, as an 8-year-old boy, heard the wife of that man screaming from across the street. So I just had a really, really long discussion with my dad about it. He helped me so much with all the stuff with the dementors particularly. Other than that I just listen to a lot of different music for the different scenes.

Q: What can you tell us about the dementors and what they're like in this movie? And how it is acting against what will later be an effect?

RADCLIFFE: We don't know what they're really going to look like.

EMMA WATSON: We've seen some images.

RADCLIFFE: I've seen some very sort of rough storyboard things but we haven't seen any. Alfonso [Cuaron, the director] described them to us very, very vividly and they ain't gonna look pretty. They're going to be really horrific. I think they're the scariest things in all the Harry Potter books.

Q: Talk about what's it been like to work with Alfonso Cuaron.

WATSON: Especially for me, as someone who hasn't acted in anything else before, it was great working with a new director and doing something different, seeing different techniques, different ideas. It's also been really good fun.

Q: What kind of different ideas and techniques – can you give an example or two?

WATSON: I don't know, I think there's definitely a difference in style by just like looking at the two, I mean I've only seen a few clips of this third one that's coming out but Alfonso's done some amazing things with camera angles and camera shots and this one's much more flowy and it's got – I don't know, you can just tell the difference. Especially with the director, a lot of himself goes into what he's doing and you can definitely tell the difference.

Q: We heard that he's bringing out the teenagers in you.

GRINT: Yeah.

WATSON: Yeah (laughs).

RADCLIFFE: Oh yes.

GRINT: He's a bit different, but it was really sad to see Chris go. But yeah, he's really good, he's really funny and we get on really well.

RADCLIFFE: I've not seen the clips...

WATSON: Dan's being very professional and not watching it.

RADCLIFFE: No (laughs). It's not anything to do with professionalism, I just hate watching myself. I haven't seen any kind of difference in styles because I haven't seen any footage yet so I can't officially comment. Chris always had this fantastically energetic approach to doing the scenes, which suited the first two films absolutely perfectly and he made two absolutely fantastic films. With the third one, Alfonso has a much more kind of laid back, emotional, intense way of directing.

WATSON: He wanted a lot of our input in the characters. A lot more he kind of said, "Well how would you do it, what would you do it like? No, I'm not going to tell you how to do it, it has to come from what you think and from your own experiences."

Q: That was a big change from Chris?

RADCLIFFE: Not really. Chris was very much so, both of them. It's an adaptation of a book so it can't be the director who says what kind of film it's going to be, it's the book that says how the film should be made.

Q: Have you seen any of Alfonso's previous films?

WATSON: Yeah. A Little Princess. I loved that, I cried in that. Well, I cry in everything, but, it was great. It was really, oh, I loved that film.

RADCLIFFE: I've seen A Little Princess, I've seen Y Tu Mama Tambien. If you're going to work with a new director, I think it's quite important to know what kind of stuff they've done before. I'm working my way through all Mike Newell's films at the moment. I watched Donnie Brasco...

Q: What would you say was the most interesting sequence for you to shoot, or the most challenging?

GRINT: There's been a lot of good scenes in this one. The one I like is when I did my dragging thing, that was really cool, a dog dragging me into the tree. It's when the dog drags me into the tree and I had to have this harness on my leg and was dragged across the grass ... it was really fun (laughs).

RADCLIFFE: Sounds incredibly painful!

GRINT: That was quite difficult I suppose, because I swallowed a lot of grass.

RADCLIFFE: And you had to watch out for the camera as well.

GRINT: Oh, yeah.

RADCLIFFE: It barely nearly killed you.

WATSON: He crashed into the camera quite a lot of times.

GRINT: I kicked the lens of the camera off.

RADCLIFFE: It's important thing to point out, [he] didn't injure the cameraman. ... For me the most interesting scene is probably the Shrieking Shack you know, I'm in the scene with Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and David Thewlis all at the same time, it's like, "Oh my god, fantastic!" You know you're surrounded by absolutely some of the most amazing actors basically, so that's probably the most interesting. Most challenging ... it could have been actually the same scene because it is, you do, obviously you're putting in effort all the time, but particularly when you're with Gary Oldman and David Thewlis and Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, you're going to really, really go for it. But also all the stuff that went on with having my soul sucked out, that's also slightly harder.

WATSON: For me, like Dan, I found the Shrieking Shack was very challenging. It took quite a long time. We were in there for–

GRINT: A month?

WATSON: More than that maybe. It's such a complex scene, and a lot is happening in it, and so a lot of it kept changing and that was hard and its' all quite emotional really. Well not emotional, but–

RADCLIFFE: You feel drained after doing it.

WATSON: Yeah you do feel drained.

RADCLIFFE: Also, one of the other thing was that the walls actually leaned and creaked, so we couldn't actually hear what each other was saying.

WATSON: So we had to do it like doubly loud.

Q: Have you guys done the scene with the boggart yet, and what was that like? That must be intense in terms of effects and what you have to work around.

WATSON: We didn't actually get to do it, did we?

RADCLIFFE: You did, you had the spider.

GRINT: Oh yeah.

RADCLIFFE: But nothing was there.

GRINT: There was a picture of a spider on roller skates... (Laughs.)

Q: You get to wear a lot of your clothes in the last half of this movie. Does that help you feel more like yourself?

RADCLIFFE: Obviously in the first two films the story dictated that we were just in uniform a lot of the time, whereas a lot of the story takes place during the school year, whereas in this one a lot of it takes place during the holidays. So I think it makes it slightly more relaxed I supposed.

WATSON: I definitely felt that.

GRINT: Ron's clothes are very itchy jumpers.

WATSON: In uniform everyone looks the same and I think it's good because it got all sorts of different people's personalities out.

Q: There are lots of new sets in this one. Do you get as excited as fans do?

RADCLIFFE: Absolutely.

WATSON: Yeah! Completely.

RADCLIFFE: It was actually, it got to the point ... there were a lot of visitors to the set and they'd come on and I'd say, "What did you see?" and they'd say, "Oh, the Shrieking Shack, we saw that," they're just listing off things that I haven't even seen yet!

Q: What are your favorite new sets in this one?

GRINT: This one's really cool [the courtyard].

RADCLIFFE: And they've got a huge, did you see the pendulum? It's fantastic. But it's like, I think in one shot in the outtakes we're just all swinging. This one's really cool, especially when it's covered in snow in one of the scenes, it's amazing.

WATSON: I still walk around with my mouth open. The stuff that they do is just amazing. And there's some great stuff. We did a bit of location for about a month in Scotland and the scenery was just breathtaking, it was amazing. Massive mountains and proper fresh air and everything and it was really good.

Q: How did it feel to shoot for a month in Scotland?

RADCLIFFE: It was rainy.

WATSON: Understatement of the century.

RADCLIFFE: And it's not normal rain, it's horizontal rain. Umbrellas are really useless. It is really good to get out of the studios for a while.

Q: You guys are obviously great friends. Do you have time when you're not shooting to hang out together?

RADCLIFFE: If you hung around with me for a year you wouldn't want to spend that much more time with me. Don't laugh!

WATSON: Sorry, sorry.

RADCLIFFE: We are with each other so much of the time, that we kind of all need a break from each other by the end.

Q: This is the third film and a lot of the same crew is returning – do you guys have friendships among them?

RADCLIFFE: Oh yeah. It's just like a huge family.

WATSON: Yeah like a huge Harry Potter family.

Q: How far do you plan to go, you mentioned researching Newell's stuff. That suggests that you're onboard for a fourth ...

RADCLIFFE: Oh definitely, absolutely.

WATSON: Yep, we're onboard.

Q: Emma, are you wearing a time turner?

WATSON: (laughs) I am.

RADCLIFFE: It's kind of a bit of fake one.

WATSON: Alright, are you ready for it? It's a fish weight. [Laughter.]

RADCLIFFE: There is a very good one.

WATSON: There is actually a very, very good one.

RADCLIFFE: Yeah it's brilliantly detailed.

WATSON: I've broken about three of them so they gave me a fish weight instead.

Q: Can you tell us [to Rupert] a bit about the dynamic between you two [Watson] in this film, and does that scene resolve what's been going on throughout the rest of the movie?

GRINT: We get to argue a lot in this one.

WATSON: Yeah, it's good.

GRINT: Emma's character's got a cat.

WATSON: It's all about the rat and the cat. It's like Tom and Jerry all over again.

Q: Want to talk about working with those animals?

RADCLIFFE: A bat landed on my head. [Laughter.] It was actually very funny. I actually really love the animals, especially the lizards. The lizards are so cool. Awesome. And the mice are fighting – the mice are fantastic. We're taking bets on them. It's between who's going to win or who's going to escape first.

Q: Rupert, are you squeamish?

GRINT: Spiders I hate, but when we were in there with the bat I didn't know I was scared of bats as well. [Laughter] They're horrible!

Q: And do you two get to hug in this scene – are we going to see this? We saw a bit at the end of The Chamber of Secrets – what's going to happen, do we see anymore?

WATSON: No, it might be cut!

RADCLIFFE: We're not sure, it was originally.

WATSON: It was. But we're not sure.

Q: Did you guys bond with David Thewlis like you guys are supposed to bond?

RADCLIFFE: I spent a lot of time with him because basically the core emotional scenes in the film are with Lupin and Harry. Those are the main emotional scenes in the film so I spent a lot of time with him. It was very interesting, actually, working with him.

Q: Like the dementors, [the filmmakers] actually built a hippogriff...

RADCLIFFE: It is unbelievable...

WATSON: It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.

RADCLIFFE: It was fantastic. It's very, very cool. I'm not even going to try and explain.

Q: How did you get on with the cat playing Crookshanks?

WATSON: Oh, I love my cat! They are so rude to my cat!

GRINT: It's the ugliest cat.

WATSON: It's not!

RADCLIFFE: It looks like it's been thrown against the wall at birth.

WATSON: Okay, so it's got a flat nose.

RADCLIFFE: It doesn't have a nose! It's just 2-D! It's like the cartoon cat!

WATSON: It's beautiful in its own ugly way.

RADCLIFFE: Notice the word UGLY.

Q: Dan, if you stay on for the fifth book, how are you going to handle Harry's moods?

RADCLIFFE: What we've done in this one, which I think is quite daring really, the Harry you read about in the fifth book is the Harry we kind of portray in the third film. He is incredibly angry in this one. Just full of teenage angst. So he is an incredibly angry character in the third film. I don't know, I think a lot of people could be shocked, I don't know. I think the fifth book has prepared them for it slightly. It's different.

[Steve Horn || 13 February 2004, IGN FilmForce || Original article found