By Missy Schwartz – Entertainment Weekly Popwatch Blog
Okay. So some of you Popwatchers out there were — eh-hem — disappointed that I did not provide more details about the Sundance dinner with Alan Rickman. Shall I explain? For one thing, I was leaving that detail duty to Rickman’s No. 1 Most Awesomest Fan, Whitney Pastorek. For another, I was waiting until I interviewed the guy because I wanted to find out if he was going to use the Las Vegas hotel voucher he won at said dinner. Also, though I knew he’d never comment on it, I shamelessly had to tell him that his portrayal of Snape made me love the grumpy ole prof well before the last book revealed his heartbreaking secret. (El Jefe Pastorek and I share this sentiment.) So here you have it, Rickman lovers: After the jump, a peek at my chat with him from the day after his film, Bottle Shock (pictured), premiered.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are you having a good time here?
Alan Rickman: Yeah, it’s like 1995, maybe, or ’94, that I was here before. It seems like it’s still a small town, but something else is going on.
Something else, like swag?
Well you get taken around places, and then it’s, I dunno, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or something. [Laughs]
Bottle Shock is the second film you’ve made with director Randy Miller [after 2007’s Nobel Son]. I’m guessing you get along.
I love working with Randy and Jody [Savin, the cowriter]. God knows it’s happened before that directors and writers build up a repertory of actors. I think it’s sort of sound economics on some level. You can step straight into work because you understand the language.
You play a connoisseur of wine in this movie. How about in real life?
I love wine. I think it’s kind of a miracle, the way it grows, the fact that the vines will play along with somebody that bothers to understand them. I spend quite a bit of time in Italy. A friend of mine has a vineyard there. Good wine, good food, people talking in a beautiful surrounding — you don’t really need much else.
Are you going to use your Vegas hotel room voucher?
[Laughs]
That was funny, that you, and you alone, won one.
It was a bit funny. But strangely enough, a friend of mine and his wife live in Vegas. And because I’m not likely to be there in the next year, I’ve given it to them because they really need a break. I’m gonna give them three days in a hotel, just up the road from their house. They can take a fake vacation and maybe take their daughter and let her play in the pool and all of that.
Okay, I think your wranglers are giving me the signal, but I have to say, even before I got to the end of the Harry Potter books —
Before you go any further, I never, ever talk about that character. Number one, because it’s not fair on kids who haven’t read to the end. And for me to say anything — there’s a bit of it that just should be left innocent. It’s real storytelling, what she’s done, and I’m part of that. So I just never talk about it.
When do you go back to shoot Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?
They’re shooting six [now], and I start shooting my part of it beginning of February.
It’s a bigger part for you this time.
Ahh…. There’s important stuff. [Smiles]
