Universal have posted the full Diagon Alley Red Carpet Webcast, which was livestreamed during the event last night.  We will have our own video up, but for now take a look at the official video featuring interviews with Matthew Lewis, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps, Tom Felton, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham Carter, Domhnall Gleeson and Warwick Davis!

We attended last night’s red carpet event for the Diagon Alley Preview and this morning Universal have sent over a few photos.  We will have our own to share in time, but things are still a bit hectic with press related activities so we will get them up as soon as possible. We will also have video from the red carpet shortly. View the photos of Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Evanna Lynch, Matthew Lewis, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps, Bonnie Wright, Warwick Davis, Domnhall Gleeson and Tom Felton  in our gallery.

Magical Menagerie was just at a press conference where Thierry Coup (Senior Vice President, Universal Creative), Matthew Lewis, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps and Evanna Lynch announced that Diagon Alley will be opening on July 8th!

We will have a full video of the announcement later tonight!

Update: Universal released a new commercial which can be seen here.

The Universal blog and The Today Show have released a list if Harry Potter actors attending this weeks Diagon Alley Preview. we’re here and will keep you up to date on Twitter: MM_Official.

Bonnie Wright
Evanna Lynch
Domhnall Gleeson
Matthew Lewis
James Phelps
Oliver Phelps
Warwick Davis
Tom Felton
Helena Bonham Carter
Robbie Coltrane

Helena, Robbie and Tom will appear on Wednesdays Today Show.

Evanna Lynch has announced today that she has opened up a YouTube account for herself. In the announcement she said:

So I finally started a Youtube account! I have no desire to start vlogging (I write much better than I speak) but I have been doing a lot of public speaking lately and many of you have been asking for links to watch them. I am finally at the stage where I feel confident about speaking in public and happy to share these videos so I will be using this youtube page to upload all future speeches/talks I do. Eventually I’ll have a website where I can upload the transcripts of speeches and write more blog posts but that is a while off. For now, here is the full version of the short speech I gave at WE Day London last month. Lots of Love, Evy xxx

She has posted her first video, from WE Day in London on March. She also spoke at WE Day in California but a video from that appearance has not been posted yet.

In a new opinion piece for The Independent, Harry Potter actress Evanna Lynch discusses the huge amount of hate and cyber-bullying she was subjected to after getting the role of Luna Lovegood.   She also discusses how she joined twitter and all the wonderful comments she got through it, making her ignore the haters even more.  She ends the piece by talking about how you can “love yourself” and be a happier you!  Read the full piece here.

They say we remember a compliment for two weeks and an insult for 14 years. Just as I am about to single out the one troll and prepare to fight venom with venom and fire, I pause and think what kind of person that makes me. Someone who doesn’t care about the dozens of pure, generous souls who offer kindness and support, and instead lavishes time and attention on the one miserable leech? I stop, delete the offending tweet, maybe block the user and focus my attention on the people who remind me to see the beauty in the world and in myself.

I don’t think we’re ever strong enough to read the hateful stuff and let it roll off our backs. It’s all very well for the self-help books and bespectacled psychiatrists to dole out the very grand advice to simply “love ourselves”. What the hell does that mean to the 13-year-old who’s put on 15lbs and is told every day at school she’s a fat pig?

Essentially, “loving oneself” is the answer, yes, but as a hyper-aware, introspective, self-help-book-consuming 22-year-old I have already deduced that that is a mission that takes a lifetime of learning, forgetting, crying-in-your-car-that-you’re-a-giant-failure and relearning all over again.

No, it’s not about demanding of ourselves to instantaneously love ourselves. It’s about consciously choosing light over dark. It’s about realising that even if we don’t have the strength to stare these hurtful comments plain in the face and say “you’re wrong”, we have the strength to search for those people who will convince us that the bullies and the nasty things written about us, or others, are wrong.

And it’s about practising that positive outlook every single day, with every person, in everything we do until eventually – eventually – that becomes a habit.