James and Oliver Phelps chatted with WA Today over breakfast while in Sydney, Australia last week. Some snippets from the interview may be read below.

How did you feel about going ginger?
James: I didn’t think anything of it until I walked into school one day with red hair and everyone looked at me differently. It was weird. People do treat you differently; they’re almost a bit [ruder]. It’s odd.

Did it make you the coolest kids at school?
James: No, no one seemed to be that bothered by the hype; our mates don’t realise how big it is because none of our friends are in the industry. Film and TV was nothing I’d ever dreamt of going into. In fact, about two months before we had the audition, there were auditions for the school play and the head drama teacher, in the first round of auditions, was like, ”Nah, you’re never going to go anywhere in acting, don’t bother,” so it was great walking back in there on the first day of the next term and saying, ‘I got a contract with …”

Oliver: The drama department was just really unhelpful towards the whole acting thing, to a point where the head drama teacher said, ”Your priorities need to shift if you’re going to continue with acting so can’t you film Harry Potter on a Saturday?” He thought we should have been at school doing his class rather than making these films that were watched worldwide.

What’s next for you both?
Oliver: Yeah, there was [something we went for], actually. I won’t say the film but there was a film that had twins in it; we read for it and it looked rosy but Harry Potter was filming at the same time so we missed out. But we have different things coming up; we’ve got two individual projects in the new year and then another film together in May in the States and I’m also going to do a little documentary program as well, which will be quite cool.