While the Harry Potter films are on many people’s holiday watchlists, are they considered a part of the Christmas movie genre?
“I’ve seen this debate online. Is Harry Potter a Christmas movie? That is one for the philosophers,” Emma Watson’s younger brother, Alex Watson, shared in an interview with Today.com published on Wednesday, December 11. “I think it’s super cozy. There tends to always be, like, a Christmas scene throughout the films or most of them.”
Regardless of the film’s “cozy” vibes, Alex, 31, admitted that labeling them as Christmas is a bit of a “stretch.” He shared: “I think it’s a Halloween movie, for sure. It’s a great family film, and Christmas films basically should always be family films. So, I [think] it ticks a lot of boxes.”
Despite not being categorized as holiday movies, the Harry Potter films feature many memorable festive scenes, from Christmases spent at Hogwarts, The Burrow and 12 Grimmauld Place to the elaborate Yule Ball dance from 2005’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Emma, 34, spent a decade playing Hermione Granger in all eight Harry Potter films from 2001 to 2011. During her time playing the brightest witch of her age, she briefly got to share the screen with Alex in 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
“I was in the fifth one for, like, all of about three seconds,” Alex told Today.com of his cameo, which saw him seated across from Hermione and next to Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) during a scene in the Great Hall. “You have to concentrate so hard to see me. If you Google me, it will still list me as an actor for what I can only assume is this three-second cameo, which is extraordinary.”
While he and Emma are focused on running their new gin company, Renais, they occasionally enjoy revisiting their time in the Wizarding World. “We’ll give them a little rewatch,” he admitted. “I’ve got younger brothers and sisters as well, and we’ll sometimes get together and give them a watch.”
Emma and Alex are the only two kids of parents Chris Watson and Jacqueline Luesby, who divorced in 1995. The brother-sister duo have multiple siblings from their parents’ other relationships.
With the holidays fast approaching, Alex told Today.com some of his favorite memories growing up were spending Christmas with his family in France (which is where his father owns the vineyard from which Renais gets ingredients). These days, he’s happy to spend “a lot more time together” with Emma, whose last film credit was 2019’s Little Women.
Lining up with the Christmas season is the new competition show Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, hosted by James and Oliver Phelps, a.k.a. Fred and George Weasley. The series, new episodes of which drop Wednesdays on Food Network, sees teams of bakers and pastry chefs
“The vast majority of people have heard of Harry Potter in some way, shape or form, whether they’ve read the books, seen the movies or just heard people talking about it. Every episode of the show is based on a theme of a set,” James, 38, exclusively told Us Weekly last month. “So, we film the series at Leavesden [Studios] where we filmed the original movies, so what works well is that it’s literally all these top bakers and chefs imaginations from the movies coming out in edible forms.”
Oliver, 28, told Us that returning to the franchise’s sets felt like they “jumped back in time,” adding, “It could have been a day later than when we finished filming. It’s amazing how when you’re in an immersive environment like that, you almost step back into that feeling of when we were filming.”
