Harry Potter: James Phelps (Fred Weasley) was shocked when he read his character’s fate
James Phelps played Fred Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. And when he first read what happened to Fred, it messed him up.
On HBO’s Game of Thrones, it was customary for the showrunners to call actors before a new season began to tell them if their character was going to die. Cast members lived in fear of those calls, since it meant their time with the show was over.
The actors on the Harry Potter movies didn’t have quite this problem, since the films were made after the books had already come out and they could just read ahead to see if their character’s number was up. But it didn’t mean they weren’t in for a shock when they got there.
Such was the case for James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the series. When he read that Fred died in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, making him one of the handful who didn’t make it to the end, it hit him hard.
Phelps was traveling in Japan at the time the seventh and final book in the series came out, and recounted the gut-punching moment he read Fred’s death to Metro. “The book had just come out that day, so I found an English copy,” he recalled. “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 realize how attached I got to the character.”
It’s probably safe to say most fans can relate to the shell-shocked feeling, given how popular the Weasley twins are. But Phelps was so stunned he had to collect himself before getting out his train ticket and carrying on with his day.
“So I’m kind of all going over these different emotions,” he continued. “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!’”
At least Phelps’ sense of humor survived the final Harry Potter novel. And it’s comforting to know the impact of Fred’s death was felt as heavily behind the scenes as it was among the audience, even if most of us would have preferred if he survived the war and went on to run his joke shop another 50 years.
Next. David Tenant looks back at Harry Potter role. dark
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