Evanna Lynch Leakycon Interview

#Interview: Evanna Lynch at Leakycon 2017

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend Leakycon. For those who aren’t aware of Leakycon, it is an event that celebrates the wonder of J.K. Rowling, the boy who lived and the incredible fandom that worships them. During Leakycon I was able to sit down with several notable names that have been a part of the Harry Potter franchise including storyboard artist Jim Cornish, who worked on several of the Harry Potter films, Dan Fogler one of the stars of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and finally Evanna Lynch aka Luna Lovegood.

Check out a portion of the interview with Evanna below and if you’re interested in the uncut audio version click the link to the Speakin’ Geek podcast and you’ll be able to hear the full interview in all its audio glory.

You studied drama in school, did you always want to be an actor?

Yeah, yeah I always did, but I alway assumed I was going to be an actor. I didn’t really have a plan as to how I was going to do it. I just didn’t see myself doing anything else, like telling stories being part of the story. I even remember back when I was a kid, and we used to go to mass, and there would be a children’s mass where they would act out scenes from the bible, and I was desperate to get up on that altar and just be part of it, just be part of the story. But I never had a plan, I didn’t go to drama school, my agents actually talked me out of that because they said if I was in drama school I wouldn’t be able to do work for years, and you don’t need and in retrospect, I don’t think that was good advice but then I lived in LA for a few years, and I studied there with several teachers.

What was the feeling like when you’d found out you’d beaten so many actors to the role of Luna? I believe it was 15,000 other actors.

I don’t think of it as beating others though because it doesn’t matter how many audition whether it’s 5 or 15,000 only 1 person can get it, and it’s like there is only 1 person for each role and it just so happened I was the right one for Luna, and there have been many auditions since and many more to come where I’m not the 1 for that role, and it’s somebody else’s. And that’s what I felt for my audition for Luna, I just felt like nobody else got her like I did and that may be true and may not be true, and I know there are other people with an affinity for her. It’s just that I felt fiercely protective of her because I was like: I understand her, and I know what she brings to the world and what she means to people and what her kind of message is, and I just wanted to protect that.

What was it like stepping onto the set for the first time, into the halls of Hogwarts?

They were cool, the hall was cool but to be honest, there were just bits of sets and I’d be like: I can’t wait to see the moving staircases, and it’s just one staircase they shoot around and the rest is green screen. The most fun sets were the houses or the rooms because they had so much character and it told you so much about the inhabitants. Like the Weasleys, you’d open a drawer and there would be wizarding articles that someone had taken the time to write so those were my favourite things because you’d just get lost in there and pretend you were in the world.

Evanna Lynch was an absolute pleasure to interview and Leakycon was a joy to cover. The full interview with Evanna Lynch and several other guests is available to listen from the Speakin’ Geek podcast here. If you were at Leakycon this weekend and got to meet Evanna Lynch let us know how you got on.