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Iwan Rheon (“Game of Thrones”) and Blake Harrison (“The Inbetweeners”) are the new Moony and Wormtail in Audible‘s “Harry Potter” audiobooks.
They make their debuts as Prof. Remus Lupin (Rheon) and Peter Pettigrew (Harrison) in “Prisoner of Azkaban,” released by Audible Tuesday. They’re two iconic characters, who were played by David Thewlis and Timothy Spall, respectively, in live-action, now being reinterpreted in the audio-only wizarding world.
Both characters have animal twists that changed how Rheon and Harrison approached their voices. Lupin, first introduced as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and a mentor for Harry, is secretly a werewolf. And Pettigrew, one of Voldemort’s creepy acolytes, is revealed to be magically hiding in plain sight as Ron Weasley’s pet rat Scabbers for most of the book. Everything culminates in a climactic scene in the Shrieking Shack, where the truth about the two Animagi (wizards who can turn into animals) is revealed, plus Sirius Black (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) comes clean as a friend of Harry’s parents who can also turn into a black dog.
With Variety, Rheon and Harrison talk about finding their voices for Lupin and Pettigrew, nailing how to pronounce Voldemort and more.
How much of “Harry Potter” fans are you guys?
Iwan Rheon: I was always a fan of the books and the audiobooks. So when the opportunity came for this, I thought it was a joke. I thought my agent was taking the piss out of me.
Blake Harrison: Weirdly I got into the books more recently. I sort of missed them growing up, and my daughter got into them a few years ago. So I’m kind of a recent Potter convert because my daughter, who’s now 12, when she was about nine or 10 she got really into them. God, we had a birthday that every single gift she got was something related to Harry Potter, and we went to the Warner Bros. world.
Did you have to audition for your roles or were they offered to you?
Rheon: I just got an email saying, “Would you like to play Lupin?” from my agent. I was really thrilled. Of all the characters, I was just really happy to get to do him. I’ve always loved him. I think “Prisoner of Azkaban” was probably my favorite growing up.
Harrison: I actually auditioned for a different role, and then they came back saying, “Do you want to do Pettigrew?” He’s the character I’d probably have even more fun with, so that’d be great. I went up for Dobby, and that ended up going to a mate of mine called Danny Mays.
There are definitely some similarities between Dobby and Pettigrew, both are kind of little, weaselly characters.
Harrison: Definitely higher-register voices. Pettigrew is a bit more strained, but they are higher-register voices, for sure.
Iwan, how did it feel to be offered Lupin? He’s a pretty major character in Harry’s life and has the great werewolf twist.
Rheon: It’s the kind of thing you don’t really expect to be offered. Obviously I’m very familiar with the character, but then you go through the books and see his role, what he what he offers Harry and that sort of fatherly relationship and how he steps in as the link between Harry and his father. Getting to explore all that stuff was really interesting. It was quite nice to go through that whole journey in just a few days when we were recording, rather than over the course of many books. You start to understand the character a lot more, because you get where he’s at and obviously he’s been an outcast his whole life and he’s been given this opportunity. He’s tormented, but he still hasn’t let it get to him as a person and he’s still got that kindness and generosity of spirit, whereas a lot of people might have been broken by that and gone the other way.
Blake, Pettigrew has a similar twist when it’s revealed that he’s actually Ron’s rat Scabbers, but he gets to speak as a human more in the later books.
Rheon: How did you play the rat?
Harrison: Well, I did a few months at the rattery. I don’t know if you’re aware of the rattery.
Rheon: Oh, yes, it’s a wonderful place.
Harrison: Yes, the rattery, you’ve been! I love cheese. God, I ate a lot of cheese. That was my preparation for the rat, thank you for asking. I tried to look at it from purely a physical point of view. In my head, his voice years prior to being a rat for 12 years would have been quite different. We’re in a world of wizardry and magic, and anything can happen. But I like within those worlds for there to be something rooted in reality or physics. If you’ve had to shrink down your voice box and larynx to be rat-sized and be squeaking all the time, that’s going to do a lot of damage to your human voice, if you take that form for too long without changing back. That’s where I was coming from with it.
Iwan, how did you approach Lupin’s voice as a werewolf?
Rheon: Well, I went to wolf school. Less cheese, more chickens. I guess it’s weaker because he’s going through the transformation and he’s not very well. We did a transformation where I had to do a lot of howling and growling which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. But you never see him as a werewolf speaking, obviously because he’s a werewolf. It was that fatigue and a little guilt, because he feels guilty about transforming, so I was trying to incorporate some of that into the way he speaks
How do you make the perfect howl?
Rheon: I have no idea. I just went for it. I felt like a bit of an idiot, not gonna lie to you, in the studio and everyone’s looking at you. We did loads of different layers of growls and howls, some painful going through the actual physical pain of the transformation, which was quite an important part of it.
David Thewlis’ and Timothy Spall’s performances are so iconic in the movies, how did you want to make the voices your own for the audiobooks?
Harrison: I find voice acting so liberating because you’re not limited by how you look physically or by your own body or anything like that. It’s quite easy for you to put your own spin on it, especially when you only have to focus on one part of you. You just have to focus on the voice. I did feel sort of a sense of pressure, particularly with that first scene. I walked into the booth, and the first time you hear Pettigrew speak is that scene in the Shrieking Shack. When you watch it on film, it’s one of the most amazing scenes in terms of what it must have been like for Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, because you’ve got Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, David Thewlis and Alan Rickman all in one scene together. I walked into that audio booth, and I know it’s not the same thing, but you’re walking into that audio booth going, “God, this day was so good. It can only go downhill from here, surely.” It was like an element of pressure. This is such a great scene with such brilliant actors in it. I really wanted to do it justice.
Rheon: Yeah, absolutely the same. They’re all legends and so is everyone in those films. There’s a lot of pressure. It’s already been read so well by Stephen Fry. You don’t want to copy the other person, and you want to bring your spin to it. Once you get cracking, you start to find a bit of your own rhythm in the studio. I was quite excited to be given a wand, which helped a lot. I just held onto the wand the whole time, and that really helped me for the first few days.
Did either of you struggle with any tongue-twister spells or names?
Rheon: I was struggling with Voldemort because I’m so used to saying it with a T, and it isn’t, apparently. Animagi and Animagus — things like that. You’re reading all day and by the end of the day you’re so tired. I’m dyslexic so it’s a bit of a scary process for me anyway to sit there reading. I’ve not done audiobooks in the past because of that, thinking I’m not gonna be able to do it, but with this it was just too great an opportunity to turn down. Lupin does a lot of explaining as well, so he’s got these big speeches when he’s telling the audience what’s going on. Some of that could get a bit tricky towards the end of the day, when you’re tired and you’ve been growling.
Harrison: I did have fun playing with my wand as well, because I got to shout Avada Kedavra at one point. So that was quite something. I got to shout the killing curse for poor, old Cedric Diggory. I’m a bad guy, what can I say?
English (US) ·