As we posted earlier, Tom Felton attended the press conference for his upcoming film “Belle” today where he plays James Ashford. The transcript of Tom’s question and answer can now be read below.

WARNING: Tom’s question and answer includes spoilers for a scene in the film.

HENRI BEHAR: He was extremely mean in the early Harry Potter, in this film as James Ashford he’s even meaner: Mister Tom Felton.

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HENRI BEHAR: Another embarrassing scene for the viewer, is your moment, Mr. Felton, when you grab [Belle] off-screen, and one would almost hate to imagine what exactly it is that you do… was that also a difficult scene to prepare?

TOM FELTON: Definitely, yeah. I actually really like Gugu [Mbatha-Raw, Belle], so it was quite awkward to grab her in an un-gentlemanly fashion, yes! [Gugu laughs] So we were, I think we were constantly sort of doing a soft grab, and then eventually we had to sort of keep ramping it up, and following the cut I would quickly apologise a thousand times to try and worm my way back into her good books. Yes it was, you know actually, it was a fun scene in an odd way. Amma [Asante, director] spoke really brilliantly to me before it started about where James is coming from, and it’s kind of an obvious- or easy to see him as racist or as a fascist pig, but really I think a lot of it comes from fear of change, an unwillingness to want to evolve with the way society was moving. And looking back at it, I think it’s quite incredible that had those events not happened, and had these characters not done what they had done, we may be seeing race and class and all the rest in a completely differently light to today. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed not only the scene, but the entire context of the character.