CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORP. #1

CBC Interview #1, 26 October 2000

Eleven-year-old Lauren McCormick of Little Current, Ontario, was one of hundreds of kids who phoned in from across the country to enter This Morning's "I Want to Interview J.K. Rowling" contest, and she was the winner.

Rowling, the author of the insanely popular series of books about Harry Potter, speaks with host Shelagh Rogers at This Morning's studios. Lauren McCormick is also in studio with her own list of questions for the writer who is credited with turning millions of children into bookworms.

Shelagh Rogers: I just want to explain that Lauren will be sharing in the questioning of Jo Rowling – we have been instructed to call you Jo. You don't like “Joanne”?

J.K. Rowling: No one ever called me Joanne when I was young, unless they were angry.

Rogers: We're going to be asking some of the questions that were called in on our hotline from kids across the country. Lauren, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Lauren McCormick: Is this your first trip to Canada?

Rowling: It is my first trip to Canada. I've always wanted to come here. When I was about 8 years old, my father was offered the opportunity to come and work here for a year. For a moment we thought we really were coming to live in Canada, and we were very excited. But it fell through. We were very disappointed.

McCormick: Where does your daughter stay when you're traveling?

Rowling: It depends. Sometimes she comes with me – this time she's being looked after by my sister, who's like "Second-in-Command Mummy."

Rogers: What did you think Canada would be like?

Rowling: Beautiful, and I haven't been disappointed. We went to Niagara yesterday. We've all got this lifetime "To Do" list, and visiting Niagara was one of mine. It was just stunning. Beautiful.

Rogers: Charles Dickens once said that the Falls were the second great disappointment for a honeymooning couple [laughs].

Rowling: Poor Charles. He had problems.

McCormick: I received an invitation in the mail to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was secretly sent to me by my grandmother before she died. ... I was 10 years old at the time I received it. I know it wasn't real. I am able to tell the difference between real and imaginary. Is there any harm in allowing a kid to fantasize?

Rowling: I don't think there's any harm at all in allowing a kid to fantasize. In fact, I think to stop people from fantasizing is a very destructive thing, indeed. You're very typical of children who absolutely do know the difference between fact and fantasy.

Rogers: Lauren, how do you feel about that?

McCormick: I feel the same way as Jo.

Rogers: Fact and fantasy are both important to you, though, right?

McCormick: Yes.

Rowling: But to receive a letter like that, that's wonderful. You know you're suspending disbelief. Nice grandmother.

Rogers: Some of my friends and Lauren's friends aren't allowed to read the Harry Potter series. Right, Lauren?

McCormick: Yeah.

Rogers: There have been some issues, in certain parts of the country, about witchcraft, and devil worship, and that sort of thing. What do you say to that?

Rowling: I get asked this a lot, as you can imagine. First of all, I would question whether these people have actually read the books. I really would question that. These books are absolutely not about devil worship.

I vacillate between feeling faintly annoyed that I'm being so misrepresented and finding the whole thing really quite funny. Because it is laughable that someone would say that of these books. I think anyone who has actually read them would agree with that. But there's always the rogue person who can't see what's right under their nose, and there you go.

Rogers: Jo, there's lots of fun and fantasy in these books, but there are also life lessons in these stories. What did you intend to write when you started?

Rowling: Initially, I intended to write a story. No more or no less than that. I love stories. We need stories, I think.

Every "message" – and I put that in heavily inverted commas [quotation marks, actually] because I don't set out to teach people specific things... I never sit down at the beginning of a novel and think, “What is today's lesson?” Those lessons, they grow naturally out of the book, and I suppose they come naturally from me.

Rogers: I do hear that in the fifth volume that's about to come out, that Harry is going to have to deal with death.

Rowling: Harry has already dealt with death, of course. He lost his parents very young. In book four, he witnessed a murder, which is a very disturbing thing. So this is not news to anybody who has been following the series, that death is a central theme of the books. But, yes, I think it would be fair to say that in book five he has to examine exactly what death means, in even closer ways. But I don't think people who have been following the series will be that surprised by that.

McCormick: In all your books, the continuing theme is that people are not what they appear to be. Sometimes they seem dangerous and are good. Sometimes helpful people are bad. It looks like Harry is being taught to overlook first impressions and to be suspicious of people. Do you think that's something kids need to learn more than other generations?

Rowling: You're right, this is a recurring theme in the books. People are endlessly surprising. It's a very jaded person who thinks they've seen every possible nuance of human nature.

Sometimes I get asked, "What would be your recipe for a happier life?" And I've always said, "A bit more tolerance from all of us."

One way to learn tolerance is to take the time to really understand other people's motives. Yes, you're right. Harry is often given an erroneous first impression of someone and he has to learn to look beneath the surface. When you look beneath the surface he has sometimes found that he is being fooled by people. And on other occasions he has found very nice surprises.

Rogers: Your books have brought sort of a renewed interest in Latin.

Rowling: [laughs] I went back to my old university very recently; I did French and classics there. I had to give a speech, which was very nerve-wracking, because I'm speaking to very studious and learned people, some of whom used to tell me off for cutting lectures. And I said in my speech, "I'm one of the very few who has ever found a practical application for their classics degree."

It just amused me, the idea that wizards would still be using Latin as a living language. Although it is, as scholars of Latin will know ... I take great liberties with the language for spells. I see it as a kind of mutation that the wizards are using.

McCormick: I've been wondering, what were you like as a kid?

Rowling: I would say, basically, quite an introvert. Quite insecure. I was like Hermione. Hermione is the character who is most consciously based on a real person, and that person is me. She's an exaggeration of what I was like. But like all characters who may have been inspired by a living person -- and they are in the minority in my books, most of my characters do come from my imagination -- they take on a life entirely of their own when they become fictional characters. The starting point often ends up a million miles away from how the character was first written.

But Hermione didn't. She's a lot like I was when I was younger.

Rogers: What was school like for you?

Rowling: We moved from a school in Bristol, which is obviously a large city, and we moved to this tiny little village school, and I hated it. We had roll-top desks, and I had a real dragon of a teacher, who is now deceased, so I can speak freely. She used to sit everyone in the class according to how clever she thought they were, which is a really vicious thing to do.

She asked me a couple of questions when I joined the class, found out I couldn't do fractions, and put me in the “stupid” row. Then, after a few months of teaching me, she decided I'd been seated wrongly, so she made me swap with my best friend in the clever row. So that was a very early, bitter lesson in life. Don't be too clever; it loses you friends.

So I can't say I have particularly happy memories of that school.

McCormick: Why do you think your books appeal to adults as well as kids?

Rowling: I can only speculate about this, really. I'm very bad at being a critic of my own work. I'm far too close to it. I find it very difficult to say why I think things are so popular, and so on. I'm guessing it's because I write about things I find funny, as opposed to what I think 8 year olds find funny. And I suppose other adults find it funny, too. I'm clearly an adult.

Rogers: But you do have a child in your life.

Rowling: I do have a child in my life, right at the center of my life, my daughter, Jessica. She's 7.

ON TO CBC INTERVIEW #1, PART 2 >>