In between our yearly holiday rewatch of the Harry Potter movies in order and the anticipation for the upcoming Harry Potter Max series, the Wizarding World has been expanded with its first baking competition series, Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking. The Food Network show has James and Oliver Phelps (a.k.a. the Weasley twins) hosting as pairs of expert bakers turn ingredients into show-stopping desserts, and of course they brought some of their cast members on the journey.
When CinemaBlend interviewed the Phelps brothers, they spoke with us about their favorite fan geek-out moment while returning to the original sets from the films, and how the late Maggie Smith is connected to the production. Additionally, they discussed bringing a few of the cast members back to Hogwarts to take part in the series. In Oliver’s words:
We still keep in contact with them to be honest with you. So it was nice, but it was nice seeing them in the Potter world as well. There was one part like when Bonnie [Wright] came in and none of the bakers knew that we had her there and that was nice seeing their reaction to it. But you know, we see Bon and we call her sis and they're like, oh wow. Oh wow, they really did it. And it's to us like, yeah, okay, okay. And then you forget where you are, you forget what it means to people to see us doing that. So it's nice to see that, in that regard too. As opposed to sometimes when we are just like, go out for dinner or something like that with them. So, to do it on the sets again, was always cool.
While fans surely haven’t seen some of the Harry Potter cast back together like this since the movies came out, as the Phelps twins shared with us, they still talk to a lot of their cast-mates all the time, and refer to their Weasley sister Ginny, Bonnie Wright, as “sis.” So while it’s very special for fans to see Wright back with the Phelps twins and on the Harry Potter sets for Wizards of Baking, it wasn’t an out of ordinary hang for the Harry Potter actors. Isn’t that sweet? As a longtime fan, it makes my heart happy to know these actors are often checking in on each other and catching dinner following the Wizarding World movies wrapping up. They did grow up together after all!
Along with Bonnie Wright joining the Food Network competition for an episode, Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) and Warwick Davis (Professor Filius Flitwick) have also been confirmed to take part in Wizards of Baking. While James and Oliver Phelps host the series, their actor guests actually take part in the judging alongside the culinary judges, Carla Hall and Jozef Youssef.
The series has the Phelps twins going back to places like the Forbidden Forest and the Great Hall, and isn’t it amazing that they decided to share it with their fellow cast-mates? We can’t wait to see the longtime friends interact during the episodes and how Bonnie Wright and so forth react to the stellar bakes.
You can catch up on episodes of Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking with a Max subscription and look forward to new episodes each Friday.
