Hey guys! Yesterday I was lucky enough to interview the lovely Tom Felton while he was at Supanova Sydney! Supanova is a fantastic event, held in Australia four times a year in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth – all of which Tom is/has attended this year! He must be keen in the place or something! Haha.

Tom managed to squeeze us in to his supabusy Supanova schedule (two eight hour days including six hours of photo sessions and a Q&A!!), for which, I’m sure, we are all very grateful! And whilst I think he would have been perfectly happy to fiddle around with my new iPad2 for ten minutes (he was pretty fascinated, and was supergeeky, which was very appropriate for Supanova), we did actually manage to get in some pretty good question and answers! The topic of the day was, naturally – with Deathly Hallows Part 2 coming out next month – Draco! But we did manage to throw in a sneaky music question too.

Thanks so much to the staff at Supanova, including the amazing Sandra for keeping us organised, the ridiculously entertaining Supagirl Kerryn K and Tom’s lovely assistant, Dee! Hope you guys enjoy the interview!

Rotae: Okay, so, have you heard about Pottermore?

Tom: Pottermore… Is this the new thing that J.K. is announcing next week? I saw this yesterday, this thing online saying J.K.’s going to announce something, and I here I am thinking, “Booyah! Book 8 on the way!” (laughs) But obviously, yeah, no. I don’t know! Someone told me it could be an online socialising thing for Potter-people?Which sounds cool! I think there’s a massive gap in the market for that. Obviously there’s loads of websites that have done that to a certain extent, but to have one that’s like, officially got the stamp of approval from her, would be awesome, I think.

Rotae: I recall you saying that you thought that portraying Draco had made you a nicer person, because you wanted to be kind of a bit more distant from that…

Tom: Yeah, ever since finishing him… I’ve been a complete arsehole. (laughs) I don’t know! There is actually some genuine argument there, although it’s just a nice, funny, story… I don’t know, there is something quite therapeutic about being an arse for half the day. Maybe I should look into doing some, what do they call it, anger management? Where you can go and like, shout at a punching bag. Go and smash up some plates. To be honest with you, I haven’t been too bad, but you know, I’m not in any rush to do any of that just yet (laughs)

Rotae: But you originally auditioned for Harry and Ron, didn’t you?

Tom: Yes! Very true.

Rotae: So do you think you would be a different person if you had been cast as one of them?

Tom: Well, one thing’s for sure, I’m very glad that I didn’t! You know, no one could have done the jobs as good as Daniel, or especially Rupert, you know, comedic genius, but yeah! No doubt things would have been very different. I’m not sure I would have rocked the ginger hair as well as I did the blond, but yeah. It’s kind of a weird one because we auditioned for so many parts as we first went in there, and we had no idea how important that casting process actually was, and that in eleven years we were still going to be taking about it.

Rotae: Well, funny you should say that, because my next question is… there was never any certainty as to whether you’d continue on?

Tom: Well, this is the thing! People keep coming up to me and saying, “Thank you so much for being involved in something so important in my life”… I swear they don’t realise that these are the people that have allowed for the eight films to be made. Like, we said one film – we were only signed up for one film. It’s only because people were so passionate and excited! So this is my chance, really, to say thank you! You’re the guys that kept me going.

Rotae: I remember around Goblet of Fire time, there was talk of changing the cast-

Tom: Yeah! Exactly! We all feared that after the fourth film that they were going to get rid of us and start again with new kids, so yeah, we’re very proud to have made it all the way through, so to speak.

Rotae: For the first five books, Draco’s very much the embodiment of the “nurture” part of “nature versus nurture”, and then in the sixth and seventh books, he starts to duel with his true “nature”-

Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. His “inner side”.

Rotae: Were you excited to tackle that?

Tom: Yeah! Very much so! It only struck me when I read the sixth book that he had, I think, been purposefully written so one dimensionally in the previous books, to make the audience hate him and think, “what a slimy git”. But it’s nice as well, you know, because a lot of people don’t get the chance to look behind the lives of bullies, and people that are generally arses, and see that most of them have really troubled backgrounds, or troubled childhoods. So it’s one of those things that amazingly, she made one of the most hated character of the school, into, I hope, one of the ones people feel the most sorry for. Because you know, although Harry has had it bad, he has all these great people around him, helping him, telling him, whereas Draco, he’s buggered from day one! He’s got no chance. It was very exciting, yeah, definitely.

Rotae: Yeah, he doesn’t have any really good mentors…

Tom: Exactly! He’s stitched up, royally! (laughs) I mean Aunty Bella was awful! I mean, come on!

Rotae: Yeah, that was terrible! (laughs)

Tom: I know! What is she like?! (laughs)

Rotae: When you watch the films, are you able to distance yourself?

Tom: A little bit! Yeah, I see Draco as a third person, although I see myself doing it, I don’t sort of look back and think, ah… I don’t look at anyone, because obviously I know Dan and Emma and Rupert very well, but when I see them on the screen, it’s Harry, Ron and Hermione, and I think it’s the same for them as well, so we can kind of distance ourselves from the parts, which is nice, you know. I think that usually, not that I’ve seen loads of other films that I’ve been in, that generally, you kind of cringe a bit and probably critique yourself pretty hard, but there’s something about Potter that you can just kind of let go and ride the waves, so it’s good.

Rotae: This is a question from Twitter, because we put out a call yesterday for some. This is from a person whose name is @xxSve. What do you think about your character being so loved when J.K. Rowling said that that was a bad thing?

Tom: Yeah! It is kind of strange! It’s weird to have people, loads of people, loads of youngsters, actually, say, “Oh, you’re my favorite character” or “Draco was always my favourite character”, and I always think, like, “You know you’re not supposed to like Draco, you know that Harry’s the hero, I think? Draco should be the guy you don’t like…”. The thing is, I’m not sure what it says about the parents if a seven year old actually likes the villain more than the “good guys” so to speak. So it’s kind of a strange one… yeah. For some reason bad guys seem to get some love! People love bad guys. He’s not really a straight up “villain villain”, is he? Not all the way through, so yeah.

Rotae: And, one last question from Twitter… this is from @ChristyABell. She wants to know… Do you sing your own songs in the shower/bath?

Tom: Wow… (pause) No. (laughs) In a heartbeat, no. I usually put on someone else, I generally don’t, in the same way that I generally don’t sit down and watch my own movies, generally I don’t really go and play my own tunes. But I like to play guitar in the bath… room. Not so much in the bath, or in the shower. But obviously, you know, bathrooms are usually tiled, so you get that great, acousticy-sound, and you think, “Oh yeah! I sound brilliant!”, banging out some classic tracks, so yeah. But no, the guitar does go occasionally into the bathroom.

Thanks once again to Tom for fitting us in! Have fun in Perth next weekend, and we hope to see you back next year!

Peace,

Rotae