The Harry Potter movies (which are streaming on your Peacock subscription) were filled with plenty of food scenes that made you wish The Wizarding World was real. From butterbeers to chocolate frogs, these magical treats look like quite the spellbinding experience. The fantasy franchise’s lead, Daniel Radcliffe, got real on not minding most of the eating scenes…except for one that he described as “pretty gross.”
In a 2020 episode of First We Feast, host Sean Evans asked Daniel Radcliffe about “one highlight and one lowlight” when it came to the food scenes of Harry Potter. Here was the British actor’s answer for the “highlight,” and I don’t blame him:
The crazy banquet scenes at Hogwarts where there was all like, the breakfasts particularly. I was just an 11, 12-year-old child just piling on fried eggs and bacon and sausages and baked beans every morning for just… days. So, that was great.
That sounds like paradise to get a breakfast like that while you’re in character. I remember watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and loving how the Great Hall tables would magically be filled with so much food. Talk about being welcomed at Hogwarts!
A BTS fact of The Sorcerer’s Stone said that eating real food wasn’t always pleasant when it was sitting out there for days. Professor Flitwick’s Warwick Davis said the rotted food would apparently leave a bad smell and would not be eaten for the next takes. If only there were a spell to keep food fresher and without a rancid smell.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, one of the major challenges The Boy Who Lived went through was having to survive three life-threatening tasks in The Triwizard Tournament. Just when you thought the most “intense and so crazy” tasks Daniel Radcliffe did were underwater training for that scene, he also had to eat something that was “pretty gross:”
In one of the films, I have to eat gillyweed, that I think was black licorice lace. It was designed to look like a kind of underwater seaweed plant that I could then shovel down my throat and that was pretty gross. I remember by the third or fourth take, I was like, ‘Oh, how many more of these are we gonna do?’
Looking back, Daniel Radcliffe looked really disgusted in the scene when Harry eats the gillyweed before being pushed into The Black Lake. Maybe it wasn’t all acting. But yeah, black licorice is a candy I never have any interest in trying. Especially after hearing the Swiss Army Man actor’s story.
Getting to have an English breakfast during filming sounds like a real feast, but eating black licorice lace sounds like torture. But whether delicious or dreadful, the cast of Harry Potter still had plenty of food throughout the movies to satisfy their appetites. Now, this makes me wonder what kind of unique foods the cast of the upcoming HBO Harry Potter show will have to give a whirl.
