Harry Potter fans watched Ginny Weasley say “good luck” to The Boy Who Lived as he headed off to Hogwarts nearly 23 years ago in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — and actress Bonnie Wright can’t wait to watch the scene with her own son.
“I hope he actually likes it! I mean, I can’t force it on him, but I’m definitely gonna positively encourage reading it,” Wright, 33, exclusively told Us Weekly while in New York City for the Back to Hogwarts event at Grand Central Terminal on Sunday, September 1.
The actress, who appeared in all eight Potter films as the youngest Weasley, shares son Elio, who turns 1 on September 19, with husband Andrew Lococo. Even though it’s still a few years down the line, Wright has already determined that Elio will need to read the books before he sees the movie adaptations that launched his mom’s career.
“I hope to read it to him … but I definitely will make sure we read the books before we watch the movies,” she emphasized. “Could be like reading a book, [then] watching a movie. But I’m definitely gonna make sure we go through the books. I also remember growing up with the audiobooks, so maybe the audiobooks would be nice.”
It’s not just her baby boy who will experience the magic for the first time. Wright noted Lococo, whom she married in March 2022, is not a Potterhead.
“He hadn’t actually seen any of the films before we met, so we haven’t finished all of them,” the London native explained. “We did it a bit out of order when, randomly, we went once with all our family to one of those city concerts they do where you listen to the score while you watch it. So, he’d only got up to, like, Goblet of Fire, and then we suddenly went to watch Deathly Hallows Part 1, and I was like, ‘You have missed a vital section!’ So we need to go back a bit. But he’s never read the books, so I hope he can be part of it with our son. I’m sure he will.”
Wright hopes that the beloved story will help her son develop the same love of reading that she sees in fans all the time.
“I really hope he loves the world, and I meet so many kids now who are 6 years old, 7 years old — not obviously alive at all when this was going on — and they’re just in the world, they love it,” she told Us. “I think it’s just so special that so many new generations of fans will love it and find something in the story that resonates with them. And I speak to so many parents when it comes to reading that or teachers that are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re so grateful to Harry Potter because it genuinely has inspired more reading, literacy, everything.’”
When Wright filmed 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, she was among the youngest actors in the cast at just 9 years old. Now, she and many of her costars have their own kids.
“James and Oliver [Phelps, who played Fred and George Weasley] both are parents. Rupert [Grint, who played Ron Weasley] has a daughter, and I think, for all of us, sometimes we’re like, ‘This is wild that here we are now, with kids, talking about kids,’” she said. “Like, you never would’ve thought it, so it’s really lovely. Dan [Radcliffe, who played Harry] has had his kid, and it’s just so cool that time feels like it’s gone by but also not — but then when you have kids, you’re like, ‘Oh, time has gone by.’”
Despite more than two decades passing since the start of the film franchise, you wouldn’t know it based on the gathering of passionate witches and wizards in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal on Sunday. For years, fans have gathered at Kings Cross Station in London to celebrate at 11 a.m. on September 1, the annual date and time the Hogwarts Express took students back to the magical school via Platform 9 3/4. However, this year, Warner Bros. set up special events at iconic locations across the globe — including Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo — so more fans could enjoy Wizarding World activities.
The Manhattan event included photo ops, giveaways, a performance from Broadway’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child musicians, appearances from Cursed Child actors, Lego activities and a sneak peak at the upcoming Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions video game. The flagship store, Harry Potter New York, had everyone’s sugar rush covered with their iconic Butterbeer as well as wizarding treats like Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.
Wright was a surprise guest during Sunday’s official countdown, hosted by TikToker Kierra Lewis, and was met with excited cheers from the crowd of fans in Hogwarts robes in Vanderbilt Hall on Sunday. She fondly recalled how her very first — and only scene — in 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was when Harry pushed through the magical barrier to Platform 9 3/4.
After the event, she told Us that she remembers that first day very well. “I had never set foot on a professional set before, so I had no idea what to expect,” she recalled. “They’d already been filming for a few months, so I was kind of coming into production, but it’s obviously the first day of the week, new family, so it was a big, exciting day. I remember they’d blocked off a couple of the platforms in order to film. And the scale of Harry Potter as a film was massive. You had multiple cameras, hundreds of crew. And I remember just being like, ‘Oh, my gosh, like, what am I meant to do?’ I’d never even done anything [in film or TV before].”
Wright shared that while Julie Walters played Ginny’s loving mom onscreen, she also helped Wright find her footing behind the scenes.
“Julie Walters, who played Molly Weasley, really saw that I looked a bit lost and took me under her wing and really just was like, ‘OK, stand here. You do this, you are good.’ And [Julie] just really looked after me, and I’m so lucky that she did,” Wright gushed. “It was just so special and magic.”
Her performance, she said, didn’t require much effort since it matched her own emotions. She explained, “I genuinely think my performance was just how I felt in the day — eyes wide, like, ‘Wow, what’s happening?’ And then that line I have — ‘good luck,’ that I say to Harry as he pushes through the wall — was actually not in the script, so I was given that on the day. So I was very excited to have a speaking role.”
Of course, that was the first of many lines for Ginny, who went on to be Harry’s love interest and eventual wife. However, Wright didn’t know where the story was going in 2001 (the final book didn’t hit shelves until 2007).
“At that point [while filming Sorcerer’s Stone], a couple of the books had come out, but for so many of us, we really didn’t know the fate of our characters. So I was also grateful to have such a cool character arc,” she told Us. “Ginny has such a massive, huge journey that she goes on that was really fun to be able to play for 10 years.”
Wright recently got to return to the place where all the magic first happened for the upcoming Max competition series Wizards of Baking, in which bakers create Potter-inspired desserts. She was announced as a guest judge on the new show during the Back to Hogwarts event.
“It was really fun,” she said of the experience. “We filmed it pretty recently, like, back in July. It’s with my lovely brothers, James and Oliver Phelps. They do such a brilliant job of presenting a show and really just taking us back to the magic of the series. We filmed on the actual sets, which I think people are gonna love because to return to them and see them in more detail is so cool.”
Wizards of Baking will premiere later this fall on Max, where all eight Harry Potter films are currently available to stream.
