Max’s Harry Potter TV series shoot was ‘brutal’ — here’s why
One of the Harry Potter show’s stars says in a new interview the first season’s shoot was “brutal” — for a behind-the-scenes reason fans won’t spot on screen.
Here we go again: another dive into the world of gigantic fantasy adaptations. This time, it's the Harry Potter TV remake that's got everyone talking — not least because someone on the inside has opened up about just how rough filming the first series actually was. Spoiler: it's not all wands and chocolate frogs.
The temporary school opens every day at 5:30 a.m. and closes at 8:30 p.m.
Long Hours on Set
Turns out, the big problem is the kids' schedules. According to Adriano Goldman — he's the bloke running cinematography on the series — shooting with a young cast can be a genuine slog. In a chat with Andre Pilli, Goldman spelled out the main challenge: the team has to work around strict rules about just how much child actors can work, and schooling's non-negotiable. What does that mean in practice? You're shooting at a breakneck pace, and sometimes, to put it politely, the quality inevitably takes a bit of a knock.
Goldman didn't mince words about the pressure. Because the actors playing Harry (Dominic McLaughlin), Ron (Alastair Stout), and Hermione (Arabella Stanton) are only allowed on set for a limited window, the crew has to block out and practice scenes in advance — all while the kids are off in class. They race through the real takes as soon as the kids are back, hoping they've got it right first time.
School Meets Set
The schedule's brutal partly because production had to set up a temporary school over at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden — yes, an actual school, just for the cast and assorted production kids. Reportedly, this "Hogwarts-adjacent" learning centre can hold up to 600 students when things get busy, though usually it's about 150.
And it's not just a 9-till-3 job, either: kids start as early as 5:30 in the morning and can carry on till 8:30 at night, snatching lessons between scenes, re-shoots, and whatever bit of the castle they're in on the day.
According to Goldman, all this scrambling to finish scenes, constant criss-crossing between takes and timelines, makes for a properly tangled filming process. In his words: "It's really hard. You shoot everything out of order, right, because of that kind of scheduling. So the process is really complicated, but I've done one now."
Premiere Date
For those keen to see the finished product (and possibly to judge just how much the frantic pace shows through), HBO and HBO Max are lining up the new Hogwarts TV series to premiere in the US on 25 December 2026.