Daniel Radcliffe’s popular Harry Potter series boasted many memorable antagonists. Jason Isaacs’ Lucious Malfoy was one such character. But Isaacs’ wizard might have sounded much different if it wasn’t for Radcliffe’s involvement.
Jason Isaacs was horrified by Lucius Malfoy’s original look for ‘Harry Potter’
Isaacs played the father of Tom Felton’s Draco Malfoy in the popular Harry Potter series. Like Draco, Lucius was portrayed as arrogant and privileged thanks to being a part of a powerful wizard family. But the characters’ iconic look in the film might have looked quite different if Isaacs didn’t speak up about his appearance.
“I went to the set, and they had this idea of me wearing a pinstripe suit, short black-and-white hair,” Isaacs once recalled to Entertainment Weekly. “I was slightly horrified. He was a racist, a eugenicist. There’s no way he would cut his hair like a Muggle, or dress like a Muggle.”
Isaacs suggested to Harry Potter filmmaker at the time Chris Columbus to give Lucius entirely white hair. He also requested the garb and the cane that Lucius is seen with in the films.
“I asked for a walking stick, which Chris Columbus first thought was because I had something wrong with my leg. I explained I wanted it as an affectation so I can pull my wand out [of the cane]. After a second’s thought, he said, ‘You know what, I think the toy guys are going to love you.’ He was completely right.”
Jason Isaacs’ accent for Lucius Malfoy caused panic on the set of ‘Harry Potter’ before Daniel Radcliffe stepped in
Isaacs’ was also responsible for Lucius’ accent in the Harry Potter flicks. The actor found inspiration for the accent from a critic.
“There’s a particular art critic in England who has a voice like fingernails on a blackboard,” Isaacs said. “I combined him with a teacher I thought was patronizing and sadistic when I was in drama school. To me what [the accent] smacks of is a sense of entitlement. I just wanted to find a voice that made him drip with the millennia that his family had been in power — complete disdain and contempt for anybody and everything else.”
But those behind the scenes, including Chris Columbus, were more than concerned with Isaacs’ take on the character.
“Chris [Columbus] panicked. He asked David Heyman, the producer, to come to my dressing room and talk to me. So David came, and said, ‘I understand you’re doing a, uh, funny voice. What is it?’ I told him who it was a combination of, and he was slightly horrified,” Isaacs said.
At the end of the day, it was Radcliffe’s support that convinced Columbus and the others that Isaacs was right all along.
“We came down to the set to shoot, and Chris said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure anybody really speaks like that.’ And Daniel [Radcliffe], thank God, said, ‘I think it’s really cool.’ Chris turned to him, and being the generous and playful soul that he is, said, ‘Well, let’s try it.’ I tried it, and it stuck,” Isaacs recalled.
Jason Isaacs once joked that he begged J.K Rowling to be included in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’
Isaacs enjoyed his character so much that he once joked he wanted Rowling to revisit Lucius’ fate. Lucius’ role in the Harry Potter films dwindles as a result of events in the series. But Isaacs hoped to convince the author to make Lucius a more prominent character in the final Harry Potter installment.
“I fell to my knees and begged,” he once quipped to SCI FI (via Coming Soon). “It didn’t do any good. I’m sure she doesn’t need plot ideas from me. But I made my point. We’ll see. Like everybody else, I’m holding my breath to July to see what’s in there.”
