Harry Potter star was “shell-shocked” by his character’s death

Harry Potter star James Phelps has admitted he was “shell-shocked” when he found out his character Fred Weasley dies.

The Weasley twin was one of the many major characters to be killed-off during the climactic Battle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book and film in the series.

James had already been playing the role for six years by the time the final book was released, and it seems – like all of us – he was caught by surprise by his character’s fate.

“I was actually doing some travelling in Japan,” he recalled to Metro. “The book had just come out that day, so I found an English copy.

“I was actually on a bullet train, and I read the part when Fred died – so I’m a bit shell-shocked at this point, because I didn’t realise how attached I got to the character.

“That caught me by surprise,” he continued. “I was surprised that he died. So I’m kind of all going over these different emotions.

“At the same time, the ticket officer is coming around asking for tickets. And he just kind of prodded me saying ‘ticket, ticket’. All I could do is look at him and I actually said, ‘Mate, come on, I’ve just died here, let me have a bit of time to myself!’”

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James’ brother Oliver also opened up about learning that his character George loses an ear at the beginning of The Deathly Hallows, noting how he gets off pretty lightly compared to his brother.

“I’ve spoken to a few other cast members and some people say they went through the same thing and others say they just read it as a story,” Oliver said. “But whenever I read the book for the first time, it would almost be almost like a quick read.

“And then you’d see the character name and be like, ‘Right what’s happening with George right now?’ And then at the beginning of the story when he gets his ear blown off, I was actually thinking, ‘Oh no, this is awful! What’s happened? Oh no!’

“And then obviously reading what happens to Fred a bit later on, I thought, ‘…Well, it could have been worse.’ So that was kind of how we found out, from reading the books […] and I suppose in one way, at least it wasn’t the first film!”

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