There was some real monkey business on the set of “Harry Potter and the. Chamber of Secrets” — namely, a self-pleasuring baboon.
Tom Felton, who played the malevolent Draco Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” film franchise reveals some memorable moments in his book, “Beyond The Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard.”
The British actor, 35, writes that while making 2002’s “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” the cast had to film a scene in Professor McGonagall’s (Maggie Smith) Transfiguration lesson. All around the child actors were caged animals — snakes, monkeys, toucans “and even a rather ill-mannered baboon.”
The baboon in question was “unaware of the niceties of social interaction and set etiquette,” Felton writes, “and in particular he was unaware of what behavior is appropriate to exhibit in front of a bunch of kids.
“Which is my roundabout way of saying that we had to cope with the distracting intrusion of a self-pleasuring primate during the filming of the scene.”
Felton says that several takes were deemed unusable because of the baboon vigorously masturbating in the background. “You can imagine the chaos that ensued each time one of us kids saw what was happening out of the corner of our eye and shouted, ‘Oh my God, look at that baboon!'”
Those reactions might have cost them a pretty penny.
“The Borrowers” star explains that director Chris Columbus took great pains to make the set fun for the child actors but had to draw the line somewhere.
“Any time one of us disturbed a take, we were given a red card,” Felton writes. “A red card meant you had to put ten pounds into a bag and, at the end of the shoot, all the money was donated to charity. It was a good plan to keep us on the straight and narrow, but it didn’t always work.”
One of the worst offenders was Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley.
“I believe he put in over £2,500 during the first two films alone,” Felton writes, “such was his inability to control himself when the giggles hit.”
Felton remembers he and actor Josh Herdman, who played Gregory Goyle, ruining take after take laughing over a millipede that curled itself and slid down a desk. Stern words were had and the offending millipede was removed.
Afterward, a mortified Felton went up to Dame Maggie to apologize, who waved him away.
“I suppose, that after several decades of mastering her art,” he writes, “she was hardly likely to be derailed by a couple of teenagers pissing about with wands and a millipede in her eye line.”
