Who knew Professor Severus Snape was such a trustworthy person? I’m fascinated by the science of keeping secrets in this day and age, especially when the last Harry Potter book was about to be released.
If audiences have enough goodwill for a story, they will absolutely keep the secrets, which they absolutely did with Harry Potter, The Crying Game, The Sixth Sense, Psycho, and more.
In fact, before the book came out, a friend of mine said to me if anyone told him the ending he’d punch ’em in the face, and even if some putz put it up on a billboard, you know Harry Potter fans would do a U-turn up on the sidewalk to go in the other direction in an attempt to avoid it.
So apparently early this year, Alan Rickman, who of course plays Snape, and has portrayed many a convincing bad guy in his day, did an interview with the L.A. Times where it was revealed you could always keep a Harry Potter secret with him, so much so that he had JK Rowling’s implicit trust.
As the Times and StarPulse.com tell us, Rickman knew for years the details of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it improved his performances long before the Deathly Hallows movies were made.
As Potter producer David Heyman said, “There were times when a director would tell Alan what to do in a scene and he would say something like, ‘No I can’t do that – I know what is going to happen.’ He had a real understanding of the character, and you can see there was always more going on in there that hint at what is to come. The shadow he casts in these films is a huge one.”
As we’ve reported quite often here at TG, the paranoia in trying to guard movie secrets in the age of the Internet is pretty insane, to the point where on some films you’d have better luck getting access to missile launch codes than uncovering spoilers. But apparently if we had to put Alan Rickman in charge of any missile launch codes, well, the world would be able to sleep very safely.
