Jason Isaacs is currently earning raves for his spiraling performance on HBO’s “The White Lotus” Season 3, but to many fans around the world he’s still just Lucius Malfoy. Isaacs played the iconic “Harry Potter” villain in six movies, starting with 2002’s “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and ending with 2011’s “Deathly Hallows – Part 2.” The actor recently appeared on BBC’s “The One Show” and looked back at his Potter tenure.
“Even though I was in the films, when I’ve taken godchildren or nephews and nieces to the [studio tour] and the thing comes up and suddenly you’re in the Great Hall, every time, I burst out in tears,” Isaacs said. “It’s incredibly moving and overwhelming. There’s some magic that happened in those stories.”
But while the finished product brings tears to his eyes, Isaacs also said: “It’s a terrible confession to make: they weren’t that much fun to make. It’s quite boring making big special effects films. However the pleasures all come afterwards. I see and meet people for whom their lives were changed by it, and still people reading it and sharing it with their children. Some people say their lives were saved by it and I believe it.”
“Something happened, who knows why, when those ingredients came together and the soufflé rose and it created just love around the world and a sense of inclusion,” he concluded.
Isaacs is far from the only actor to admit that being on the set of a VFX-driven blockbuster isn’t the most exciting place to be. Fellow thespian Anthony Hopkins went viral in 2021 for saying how “pointless” it feels to act in front of a green screen. Hopkins played Odin in several “Thor” films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
A new actor will soon be taking over the role of Lucius Malfoy in HBO’s television reboot of the “Harry Potter” book series. Isaacs, who originally auditioned to play Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Gilderoy Lockhart in “Chamber of Secrets,” remembered in 2017 coming up with Lucius’ hushed and sinister speaking voice.
“It was a combination of a teacher from drama school who would constantly whisper in this very high voice, ‘You’ll amount to nothing, Isaacs. You will never work,’ and this British art critic, Brian Sewell,” he revealed. “The director, Chris Columbus, would come up to me and say, ‘So we had that take, it’s great, but could we do one more where you pull back on the voice like 80 to 90 percent?’”
Watch Isaacs’ appearance on “The One Show” in the video below.
