Despite continuing to collaborate with M. Night Shyamalan on the Apple TV series Servant and the writer/director’s upcoming film, Knock at the Cabin, Rupert Grint will always be best known as Harry Potter‘s red-headed best friend Ron Weasley. While promoting the post-apocalyptic film starring Dave Bautista, Grint opened up about the experience of living in J.K. Rowling’s Wizard World for over a decade and how it was all too easy for him to merge into his character because they were so alike.
“I was feeling the difficulty of being seen, being overshadowed,” Grint told Bustle about the similarities between himself and Ron Weasley. “In the movies, we merged into one. By the end of it, I was playing myself. The lines were blurred.”
As the films took him from age 11 to 22, Grint is glad the series ended when it did as the experience became extremely taxing:
“Potter was so full on — [filming] all year, then we’d promote the rest of the time. It was quite suffocating,” he says, uncrossing his legs. “I wanted a break, to reflect on everything… It was an out-of-body experience for a while, but I think we finished at the right time. If we continued, it could’ve gone downhill.”
However, Grint is fully appreciative of the fact that Harry Potter made his career, and he genuinely doesn’t even mind if people address him as his character in public.
“I answer to it, if someone calls me Ron,” Grint told Bustle with a laugh. “It’s my second name.”
(Via Bustle)
