The Big Picture

Tom Felton discusses his love for Kinder Joy & Harry Potter, reflecting on childhood treats & the joy of magical toys.
Felton reminisces about his time on set at Hogwarts, highlighting uncertainty between films & Daniel Radcliffe’s inspiration.
Felton shares advice for the new Harry Potter cast, encourages taking more pictures & embracing the magic of the Wizarding World.

For well over twenty years, the Harry Potter franchise has been an integral part of pop culture and a conversation starter for an entire generation who formed bonds because of their Hogwarts houses and shared passion for the series’ characters. This is why it is no surprise that one of the first things that Tom Felton and I discussed at the start of our interview is the fact that, like Felton and his character Draco Malfoy, I was also sorted into Slytherin by every Sorting Hat quiz I have ever taken.

A few weeks back, Tom Felton joined me via video call from his back garden to discuss the latest bit of Harry Potter merch arriving soon courtesy of a new partnership between Kinder Joy and Funko. The new Harry Potter Toy Collection aims to keep the magic of the Wizarding World alive for a new generation by creating collectible toys that fans of all ages can create new memories with. The Harry Potter Kinder Joy Eggs feature an assortment of sixteen Funko toys, including ten figurines of characters like Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Draco Malfoy, in addition to pencil toppers, sticky notes, and bookmarks featuring the beloved characters.

During our interview, Felton spoke about his own connection to Kinder—which was vastly more popular across the pond, than in America—in addition to his time within the Harry Potter franchise as a child and young adult. As you will see when you watch the interview in the player above, we began our interview with a sweet conversation about Felton’s on-screen father, Jason Isaacs, who I had the pleasure of moderating a panel for, alongside Matthew Lewis, earlier this year.

Tom Felton Explains Why Kinder Joy and ‘Harry Potter’ Are a Perfect Match
Image via Kinder Joy

When asked about his collaboration with Kinder Joy, Felton shared that the chocolate and the new Harry Potter toys were “kind of like two of the most enjoyable things of my childhood.” He went on to say:

“They’re the first treats that I remember getting. Usually, on Friday afternoons, being picked up by my mom after school, occasionally there was a Kinder Joy egg as a treat. It was always something to look forward to. I’ve got three older brothers, and we all collected all the various different toys that were inside. And they taste amazing. I’m still eating them to the day.
The fact that they’ve partnered with Warner Bros. and Funko to put Potter into the Kinder Joy eggs is a bit of a dream come true, to be honest.
”

I followed that up by noting that chocolate has become quite synonymous with Harry Potter, thanks, in part, to Chocolate Frogs and Remus Lupin’s (David Thewlis) feel-good chocolate quotes, which Felton quickly seized upon.

“It is! But if you told me that there would be mini versions of characters that we grew up playing inside them 22 years ago, I would have said, “That’s never gonna happen.” So, I think it’s very, very cool. I look forward to collecting the whole set.”

As he alluded to there, Felton hasn’t gotten his hands on the new Kinder Joy set yet, but he did share, “I’ve been promised they’re on the way. I will be ravenously searching for my character.” And when he does finally have them in his possession, it sounds like it will take him straight back to his childhood. When asked what he does in service of his younger self, Felton noted how the Kinder Joy collaboration is a perfect example of embracing his inner child.

“Well, this is one of them, I suppose. I agree with you about embracing the inner child. I mean, I get to do it quite a lot with acting, because playing with wands or flying on broomsticks and things like that, I actually got to do.
So something like the Potterverse and Kinder Joy coming together is the perfect way to take me back to my 13-year-old Tom, and just to remind us to be playful and to have fun with life as best we can.
”

Tom Felton Looks Back at His Time at Hogwarts

After a brief lesson on how to appropriately say the name of the Boy Who Lived—the Malfoy way—Felton and I reminisced a bit about Harry Potter. Felton has discussed the franchise a lot over the last twenty-three years, so I wanted to try to come at it from an angle that, perhaps, hasn’t been done yet. Specifically, I wanted to look back at his time in the franchise as someone who understands what it’s like to work on set and be part of “a set family.”

“Well, it was a strange thing because I think people always assumed that we were gonna make the eight films from day one, and that was never the case,” Felton said, “It was always, ‘We’re gonna make one. That did okay, so we’re gonna make another one. That did better, so we’re gonna make another one.’ We were never promised the fact that we were gonna all be coming back next year. I think we all assumed that they would replace us with half-decent actors at some point,” he laughed, “but luckily they kept us on and we got better. So, yeah, I was lucky enough to have the best of both worlds. I was able to still stay at my muggle school while attending Hogwarts, and sort of go back and forth over months at a time. And I’ve got three older brothers, so they keep me pretty grounded.”

In retrospect, it seems like a given that Warner Bros. would make the entire Harry Potter series into films given their success, but I thought it was quite interesting that Felton highlighted the uncertainty the cast felt in between films. He went on to discuss this feeling, while calling out Daniel Radcliffe as an inspiration for the cast at the time, saying:

“I think one of the issues was, “Are they gonna grow too quickly before we can actually make the films?” Because they take a long time to make, a long time to edit, and there was a worry that the youngsters wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rate of how quickly these films were being made.
But I think of Daniel when you say that because he was sort of inspirationally getting better and better every year, so he lifted the bar, really, as far as what the rest of us had to do.
It was quite inspiring to see. The first two, especially, we were just kids having fun, and it felt like that. Then we started to develop more skill, or more passion, I think mostly, purely, actually, from being surrounded by some of the greatest actors in Britain, including my father, who I still call my father, Jason Isaacs.”

Felton is well aware of the fact that it might sound “cheesy” when he talks about the bond he shares with the cast, but it’s a genuine one that has been forged from years of filming Harry Potter and keeping the spirit of the franchise alive at various conventions, events, and reunions.

“Every time I say it, it sounds really cheesy, but it’s genuinely true.
We are all a family. Days on set would only usually be 10% filming and 90% either hanging out or going to school. So not only do I consider them all family, I think I can speak for the entire cast when I say we feel a deep, deep friendship with each other, as well, as the years have gone on, and that’s only got deeper and deeper.
Me and the Weasley twins, we’re out there weekly battling it out on the golf course. Unfortunately, there’s no wands in that case. I lose most of the time. ”

Tom Felton Has Some Advice for the New ‘Harry Potter’ Cast

In a matter of months, Warner Bros. Discovery will most likely announce the cast for their upcoming Harry Potter television series, which is slated to hit the streamer in 2026, which means a brand-new band of children will get the chance to forge a life-long bond with each other, the way Felton and the cast of the original films did. With this in mind, I asked Felton if he had any advice for the next generation of kids who will soon be running around the halls of Hogwarts. Rather than giving poignant advice, he offered up his best imitation of his “father” Jason Isaacs. “I’m not sure I’m equipped to give advice to anyone. I think Jason Isaacs, I’m pretty sure one of his first pieces of advice was, ‘Don’t take advice from anyone.'” All jokes aside, he did provide some advice to the new cast:

“I would only say take more pictures and try and steal more props. I’m joking about the last one, but take more pictures because when I find one that I haven’t seen for a long time now, it reminds me of how much fun we were having. Bearing in mind, we didn’t have camera phones then or anything like that, so it’s a bit easier now.”

After I noted that the new cast will probably be all over TikTok with videos from the set, Felton agreed, “I’m sure they will. I’m very excited to hear that the Wizarding World fandom flame is not dousing anytime soon.”

Looking Beyond Tom Felton’s Time in ‘Harry Potter’
Image via Warner Bros. 

While the main focus of our conversation centered around Kinder Joy and Felton’s connection to the Harry Potter franchise, I did want to touch on some of his work outside of the Wizarding World, as he has been in a number of very excellent films and television series beyond his time at Hogwarts. When I questioned him about which role outside of Harry Potter had the biggest impact on his life, he cheekily responded “Hermione,” before laughing. After a bit of back and forth about the question and a sweet answer about his adorable Labradors, Felton went on to answer:

“Again, I’m sure the answer would change every time someone asks me, but there was a film I did called
The Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting
where I was lucky enough to play the boogeyman. I was given an incredible costume and a slight free license to do what I want with it, really. I felt like a bit of a Captain Jack Sparrow in evil clothing, so that was fun.”

Fanfiction, Fanart, and Felton—Oh My!

Since Felton innocently brought up Hermione Granger, I felt that it was my duty to ask if he was aware of the fact that an iconic Dramione fanfiction was recently picked up by a traditional publisher. Alchemised by SenLinYu began as a Draco and Hermione fanfiction that was much darker than the original book series, in addition to pairing the two at-odds wizards together, which is a popular tradition in the Harry Potter fandom. It felt like an easy question to ask, considering how active Felton has been on apps like TikTok where “DracoTok” took off during the pandemic, and how open he has always been to discussing various elements of the fandom.

“I did
not
know that. I have been lucky enough to meet the thousands of fans from all across the world, which is another reason why I find it remarkable that
Potter
has spread across every generation and every language. And yeah, when I do meet a lot of the fans, fanfiction comes up quite a lot. I confess I have not read much of it.”

And while I did advise him to steer clear of reading Harry Potter fanfiction, Felton had nothing but love for what the fandom passionately creates. “But I love the fact that it has inspired people to either do their own literature or artwork. I think that’s the best result possible from being in an artistic project is to be able to inspire someone else to do something of their own.” Tying it all together, Felton went on to discuss how fanworks compare to his partnership with Kinder Joy, adding, “I think that, but also the artwork and the various different things. I mean, the classic example, Funko and the Kinder Joy egg is keeping the magic alive.”

You can learn more about the new Kinder Joy partnership on their website, and while you wait to get your hands on these adorable pint-sized figures, the entire Harry Potter franchise is streaming on Max.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for their third year of study, where they delve into the mystery surrounding an escaped prisoner, Sirius Black, who poses a dangerous threat to the young wizard.Release Date May 31, 2004 Director Alfonso Cuarón Runtime 141 Writers J.K. Rowling , Steve Kloves Tagline Something Wicked This Way Comes

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