Harry Potter stars’ on-set pranks once caused trouble at a construction site

Practical jokes ranged from ‘silly’ to ‘really out of order’

One of the stars of the Harry Potter films has revealed the on-set pranks that took place while filming the hit fantasy adaptations.

Oliver Phelps, who played George Weasley (one half of the Weasley twins) throughout the series, described the practical jokes as ranging from “silly” to “really out of order”.

Speaking to Metro, Phelps described one particularly infuriating prank, undertaken by himself, his brother James (who played Fred Weasley) and Bonnie Wright (who played Ginny Weasley).

At the time of filming, Leavesdon Studios was situated opposite a construction site, which is now the offices of BT.

Phelps explained: “Everyone had walkie-talkies at the studios to obviously say, ‘Come down to set,’ and stuff like that. So we borrowed one of these walkie-talkies. And we realised that on a certain channel […] was the same channel as the building site over the road.

“To which Bonnie Wright, James and myself, we’d have fun looking at these guys from a long distance away saying, ‘Hey, guys, you can go home now we’ve got a missed order,’ or something like that.”

The actors would then watch as people were seen “downing tools”, before “the gaffer [came] on and probably didn’t realise he was dealing with children with his language”.

“He wasn’t very happy that we told his workforce to go home for the day,” Phelps added.

Fred, Ginny and George Weasley, in ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ (Warner Bros)

In the Harry Potter universe, Fred and George Weasley were known for their impish sense of humour, making the Phelps twins’ disruptive on-set behaviour somewhat fitting.

“We were kind of given free rein because we could just claim we were method actors and we need to be able to express ourselves,” Phelps said.