In Harry Potter there is a passage that drove an actor crazy. He claims that author J.K. Rowling deliberately included the sentence to annoy him.
Which actor is it about? It is about Stephen Fry, who is also very well known as a narrator in the English-speaking world alongside his work as an actor. His audiobooks for all the Harry Potter volumes are particularly popular.
He reads the extensive volumes with his pleasant voice and brings the different characters to life. However, as he recounted at a panel at the Hay Festival in 2019, there was a passage that posed some difficulties for him.
It was just three simple words that the experienced narrator struggled to say in sequence.
On MeinMMO, you will find a list of all the movies from the magical world: All 11 Movies of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts Ranked.
“Harry pocketed it”
What is the passage about? While recording the first volumes of Harry Potter, Stephen Fry initially had no problems. This is not surprising, as it was not the first audiobook he had read. However, when he had to say the three words “Harry pocketed it,” the problems began.
Fry struggled greatly to say the three words cleanly in succession. Individually, they were not a problem, but together they became a tongue twister.
The actor requested to postpone the sentence and called the creator of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, during the break. He recounted the incident and asked her to change the passage. His suggestion was simply to say “Harry put it in his pocket.”
But according to Stephen Fry, Rowling was strictly against it because she did not accept differences between the original and the audiobook. So the actor had no choice but to keep trying. Eventually, he managed to get through this part as well. However, the films made some changes.
How did the story end? Stephen Fry tells that Rowling continually used the phrasing “pocketed it” in the following books to annoy him. Although she knew it was a tongue twister for him, she did not change those passages.
What does Rowling say about it? The writer contradicts Fry’s assumption that she deliberately used the passage in further books. On x.com, she says that while the anecdote is lovely, it did not happen exactly like that, and the sentence does not appear in all parts. In fact, it seems to be missing from Book 3 and Book 7, as a compilation on YouTube shows.
Even though the two contradict each other here, it is still an amusing anecdote from the world of Harry Potter. Stephen Fry has successfully narrated the remaining volumes and enjoys great popularity among the English audience. Did you already know: The Harry Potter films changed an important detail – just to contradict themselves multiple times
