The Author > CBC Interview #2

CBC NEWSWORLD, 21 JULY 2000

This interview was part of a British promotional and press tour that coincided with release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on 8 July 2000. Rowling met with one reporter after another on an old English train renamed in honor of her books' rail transport.

LONDON – With a record-breaking print run of over 5 million copies, the fourth installment in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, The Goblet of Fire, finally arrived on July 8. (Seven books are planned for the series.)

In an exclusive interview, Evan Solomon, the host of CBC Newsworld's Hot Type, recently talked to Joanne Kathleen Rowling about everything from the origins of Harry Potter to her life as a welfare mother to her views about censorship and God. Solomon spoke to Rowling during a cross-Britain book tour aboard a vintage train, the Hogwarts Express, which was nicknamed after the train in her books.

Evan Solomon: The legend is that [your first book] came to you all at once.

J.K. Rowling: No, Harry came to me. Hogwarts came to me, not in its entirety but many of the characters did come in a kind of –

Solomon: Was it like an epiphany?

Rowling: Yes, it really was. I had this four-hour train journey. It shouldn't have been four hours, but the train was delayed. And Harry was there [in my mind]. The inhabitants of the castle were there. Harry's scar was there… It's a very strange thing, but I know I'm not alone in this among writers. It was as though I was given a piece of information, and I just had to find out the rest of the information.

It wasn't really as though I was inventing it. I was working backwards and forwards to see what must have happened.

Solomon: Almost pulling back the curtain to see what was –

Rowling: But no, it didn't come to me all at once. They're fairly complex plots at times, and it took a couple of years to work out the whole thing properly.

Solomon: Some of the best parts are the idea like Quidditch, which is a high-speed ballgame played on broomsticks. Tell me about the origins of Quidditch.

Rowling: I can talk wildly about those. I had a blazing row with an ex-boyfriend. I had been writing Harry Potter books for about a year, and I had decided that one of the unifying characteristics of any given society is sport.

Almost any society you can think of will have its own games and sports. I decided I wanted to – and then we had this blazing row. I don't know whether it's cause and effect. I doubt it. But I walked out of the flat and I booked into a hotel for a night and rather than sit there and think about this row, I sat there and invented Quidditch.

Solomon: Are you forever stashing ideas? Writers are forever scribbling and saying this is a perfect idea. Is that your method?

Rowling: Yeah. I actually had an idea this morning on the train as I got out of bed. Suddenly I thought, oh, that's how we could do it in Book 5. So, yes, it's wonderful when that happens, when it just comes to you.

Solomon: Some people say good characters are boring and evil characters are always the more interesting. There's the famous line about Milton and Paradise Lost: God is a bore, and the devil is interesting.

Rowling: Well, Harry is good. I personally do not find Harry boring at all. He has his faults. Ron and Hermione are very good characters ... but no, I'm not bored by goodness.

Solomon: Do you have more fun writing the evil characters? Because Lord Voledmort [the sinister wizard who killed Harry's parents], is the quintessential evil character.

Rowling: Yeah, he's a bad one. Do I have more fun? I loved writing Dumbledore, and he is the epitome of goodness. But I loved writing Rita.

Solomon: Do you have a favorite?

Rowling: Actually, no, I don't think I do. I actually enjoyed writing Dudley as well.

Solomon: Characters take on their own lives, have their own stories. Writers often say, "I loved that character, and the most tragic part of my year was having to kill him off."

Rowling: That's coming.

Solomon: Do you know already who is going to die in the next books?

Rowling: I know all of them who are going to die.

Solomon: Some of the characters we might love, and you might love?

Rowling: I'm definitely killing people I love, yeah. It's horrible, isn't it? … I cried during the writing of that one [Book 4] for the first time ever. It really upset me.

Solomon: It opens with a murder, and then there's one at the end. I won't say who it is. You cried then?

Rowling: Yeah.

Solomon: But in the future there's –

Rowling: There's worse coming.

Solomon: People love Ron, for example. Kids think you're going to knock off Ron because he's the best friend.

Rowling: Kids do, because they're sharp and they've seen so many films where the hero's best friend gets it. So they think I'm going to make it personal by killing Ron. But maybe that's a double bluff…

It's not that I sat down with a list and decided to write, "You're going, you're going, you're going." There are reasons for the deaths in each case, in terms of the story. So that's why I'm doing it.

Solomon: Is this book as suitable for the 6- and 7-year-old who loved Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?

Rowling: It depends on the kid … I have proud mothers saying to me, "He's 6, and he loves them," and I'm thinking, I personally wouldn't have said, "Go for it" with a 6-year-old. I personally wouldn't, because I knew what was coming, I knew they would get darker. So it depends on the child. My daughter is coming up to 7. She absolutely adores them.

Solomon: Even this one?

Rowling: She's not all the way through it yet.

Solomon: This is the crucial book, because after this book, everything changes. The whole world seems to go through a radical transformation.

Rowling: Well, it's the end of an era. Book 4 is the end of an era for Harry. He's been very protected until now.

Solomon: You used to work for Amnesty International.

Rowling: I did, yes. I was a research assistant. My field was human rights abuses in Francophone [French-speaking] Africa. It made me very fascinating at dinner parties. I knew everything about the political situation in Togo...

Solomon: Civil rights becomes a theme in Goblet of Fire. It shows up in Hermione [in relation to] the rights of elves.

Rowling: Yeah.

Solomon: This is a real issue.

Rowling: Yeah, that was fairly autobiographical. My sister and I were that kind of teenager. We thought, I'm the only one who really feels these injustices. No one else understands the way I feel. I think a lot of teenagers go through that.

Solomon: In Britain they call it Right On or something.

Rowling: Exactly. Well, it's fun to write, because Hermione, with the best of intentions, becomes quite self-righteous. My heart is entirely with her as she goes through this. She develops her political conscience. My heart is completely with her. But my brain tells me, which is a growing-up thing, that in fact she blunders towards the very people she's trying to help. She offends them.

Solomon: She's somewhat condescending to the elves who don't have rights.

Rowling: She thinks it's so easy. It's part of what I was saying before about the growing process, of realizing you don't have quite as much power as you think you might have and having to accept that. Then you learn that it's hard work to change things, and that it doesn't happen overnight.

Hermione thinks she's going to lead them to glorious rebellion in one afternoon and then finds out the reality is quite different, but that was fun to write.

TO CBC INTERVIEW #2, PART 2 >>