Did James Phelps break Mike Newell’s ribs by mistake? ( Photo Credit – Facebook )
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Rewinding to the filming days of the Triwizard Tournament… James Phelps shared how it all unfolded. In the scene where Fred and George Weasley are hilariously ejected from the age-restricted contest, Newell wanted the brothers to amp up their sibling rivalry. “We had these wigs and fake beards on, looking like old men, and Mike said, ‘OK, I think you guys should have a proper fight about this,’” Phelps recalled. Sounds harmless enough, right?
Not quite. Newell, ever the hands-on director, decided to personally demonstrate how to stage a convincing scuffle. “These two were sort of prissying about at it,” Newell admitted during the reunion. So, the then-60-year-old decided to step in. “I said, ‘No, come on, boys, it’s a fight,’” he quipped. Big mistake.
In his own words, “I was a tubby 60-year-old gent at that stage and I really shouldn’t have done it.” While grappling with Phelps, Newell overdid it, attempting to throw him around… and cracked a couple of ribs in the process. Ouch. “I was in absolute agony from then on,” Newell confessed, “but the wonderful thing was that I’d made a complete twit of myself, and everybody felt much better for that.” Guess comedy does come with a price.
The reunion special wasn’t all about broken bones and slapstick chaos, though. Cast members also opened up about the emotional toll of filming. Emma Watson, who enchanted audiences as Hermione Granger, revealed that she once contemplated quitting the franchise midway through. “The fame thing had finally hit home—in a big way,” she shared. “No one had to convince me to see it through. The fans genuinely wanted me to succeed, and they all genuinely have each other’s backs. How great is that?”
Tom Felton, who brought Draco Malfoy’s smirking menace to life, chimed in to highlight Watson’s strength. “People definitely forget what she took on, and how gracefully she did it,” he said. “Dan and Rupert had each other, I had my cronies, whereas Emma was not only younger, she was by herself.”
As for Goblet of Fire, it’s now immortalized as the movie where sibling antics led to actual injuries. And while Mike Newell’s ribs might not thank him, fans certainly do, because it’s moments like these that made the magical world of Harry Potter so unforgettable.
