"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Audio Interview: J.K. Rowling." IGN.com (Filmforce), November 13, 2002

Transcript by Raymond Johnson, aka "xray"

(Transcriber's note: The audio seems to be piecemeal from a much longer interview; I separated into paragraphs where breaks in the audio occurred. )

Audio available: mp3 | quicktime (run time is about 3 min.)

J.K. Rowling: All the new people in the film good, we, that everyone knows that I was very happy with the original cast and I was really pleased with all the new people in the film. I thought they were great. Really good.

The things that I always look forward to seeing on screen, like Quidditch for example, um did not disappoint me. Wonderful, absolutely wonderful... and the forest scene as well.

Hogwarts looks as near as you can make it to the Hogwarts that I envisioned in my imagination.

One of the most visually exciting things I've ever seen, erm, great story... I would say that, wouldn't I? [laughs] I wrote it.

The visual effects and the special effects are stunning. Really stunning. And, and it sounds a stupid thing to say but they certainly, they look so real. I, it's rare for me anyway, I look at a film like that and um, and I'm not distracted by thinking well how did they do that? And I wasn't doing that at all, I was, I was just watching it and accepting that Dobby really was jumping up and down on Harry's bed, so that's absolutely wonderful.

Dobby's really really good. And the mandrakes. Superb. I really love the mandrakes.

They always say the second novel is the hardest to write and it was very hard to write. But I, I was quite proud of it when I'd finished. And I'm also aware as no one else can be how important it is in the overall plot of all seven books. I mean, key things happen in book two, um, and no one but, no one, no one knows how important those things are... yet. There's a lot in there... and I know how difficult it was to get it in there without it looking as though it was, um... without drawing too much attention to all the clues so um, so yeah, I was, I was concerned to see that all, all the important stuff got into the film, and it has done. It has.

More than in the first story where Harry has been buffeted around by circumstance a little more, this time he makes a conscious choices to go, I mean more so I would say than in the first film and book, to go looking for trouble, really.

The first one is episodic—you have individual adventures, it chops and changes more and I remember when we were working on the script for Philosopher's Stone that that was something that came up continually, wasn't it? that you have these, sort of discrete adventures, and Chambers is a more, it's a more linear structure so it was easier to translate to screen.

I think Alfonso [Alfonso Cuarón], who's our new director, is going to be wonderful. I really really think he's going to be wonderful so, um, in the best possible sense I'm quite pleased. I'm pleased. But uh, Chris [Chris Columbus] is still involved and I still see a lot of him so that's, that's good too.

I'm very fond of all the, of all three children. I think that they did superb casting, really good.

Interviewer: He's loathsome really, isn't he? [possibly talking about Kenneth Branagh's role as Gilderoy Lockhart]

But he does that very well, and in a very funny way.

I don't know that I'd have immediately thought of Kenneth Branaugh for Gilderoy and yet I think that he did a fant-, a fabulous job. He made me laugh and I have seen when all the jokes are coming so if he makes me laugh that's pretty good going, um yeah, I thought he was very good. We have uh, Lucius Malfoy obviously, and I thought he was excellent. He looks a lot like Draco's father as well I think—quite a shock really, most men don't look good with long blonde hair—looks good. I loved Mr. Weasley, Mark Williams, I thought he was great.

Original page date 27 February 2007; last updated 27 February, 2007.