USA Today has a new report where they interview Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Felton about their characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

In the latest installment, Lestrange fairly begs to murder Harry Potter, lunging forward with unbridled bloodlust. “I just base her on a really, really naughty, horrible child,” says Bonham Carter. “She’s got arrested development. She’s totally unpredictable. You have no real idea of how she’s going to react.” She also is “the ultimate witch,” the actress says. “Kids are genuinely terrified by me on the street, which is quite funny.”

She didn’t relish the scene in which she tortures Hermione (Emma Watson). “It was pretty hard,” she says. “The sadistic part doesn’t come naturally to me. The oddness definitely does, but the sadism doesn’t.” All must have been forgiven. Watson and Bonham Carter happily socialized during filming. They discussed Hermione’s character, since in the final film installment, out in July, Bonham Carter impersonates Hermione. “We went to tea and had long chats,” Bonham Carter says.

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“He’s a character who’s very defined,” Felton says. “He was purposefully written by Jo Rowling as very one-dimensional in the first few books, because you’re supposed to hate him. You’re supposed to build up as much dislike for the character as you can until we get to Book 6. We hate him even more for the first half of that book because we think he’s up to something and we know he’s going to do some damage.  But it’s not until we actually see why he’s in that position and see him break down on two or three occasions that we actually start to feel a bit sorry for him. This guy’s a horrible victim of circumstances and terrible parenting.”

Felton says director David Yates explained Malfoy’s position in a way that hit home. “The Muggle (non-wizard) equivalent of what Draco was technically asked to do is like a terrorist group giving you a gun and saying, ‘Shoot your president in the head or we’re going to shoot you.’ God! Imagine a 16-year-old having to take that on! And that continues in the seventh book, when we really see him struggle. He’s a boy amongst men in a world that he does not want to be in. Every minute he stays there, he knows he’s not cut from the same cloth as those people.”