Life on the set of a Harry Potter movie sounds fun, as it’s revealed the cast of the fantasy movie series once pranked star Daniel Radcliffe with a fart machine. If you were thinking it must have been one of Radcliffe’s young friends though, you’d be very much mistaken – it was actually two of the Hogwarts teachers who pulled the stunt.
Daniel Radcliffe became a global superstar upon joining the Harry Potter cast as the titular character, and the movies based on books helped many of the rest of the cast go on to great things, too. Some actors were already well established stars before they took on their roles as Harry Potter characters, and clearly these older actors felt more inclined to inject a bit of mischief into proceedings.
In a behind the scenes clip from the third instalment of the family movie franchise, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Radcliffe shares a memory from the production, and revealed Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman had a gaseous gag up their sleeves.
“There was this one time actually where Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman, and I think Alfonso [Cuarón] was kind of co-ordinating it, took the opportunity to play a practical joke on me,” Radcliffe recalled.
Cuarón then explains the set up for the practical joke on the set of the magical adventure movie: “There was a bunch of sleeping bags, and Daniel asked us to have his sleeping bag next to this particular girl that he fancied.”
As the clip plays on, we see footage of Gambon and Rickman, in character as Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape respectively, walking among the children in their sleeping bags. As they reach Radcliffe, Gambon proceeds to press a button on a device in his hand, and the sound of flatulence erupts from Radcliffe’s sleeping bag.
“They had put a fart machine into my sleeping bag, and Michael Gambon had been pressing it during a take, I found out,” Radcliffe explained.
Maybe Gambon and Rickman were too old to be playing tricks like this? Maybe we are too old to be laughing at it so much? But life’s too short not to find farts funny.
For more from the Wizarding World, check out our guide to the Fantastic Beasts 4 release date.