Check this great video of the best highlights from the “Meet the Weasleys” panel with James and Oliver Phelps (aka Fred and George Weasley) at Wizard World Comic Con Minneapolis on May 3rd, 2015.
James and Oliver were born as the only children of the Phelps family on february 25th, 1986. Oliver was faster than his “baby” brother and came to the world 13 minutes before James. James got the names of grandfather Andrew and his uncle Eric and Oliver was named after his dad Martyn and the other grandfather John. They grew up with their two dogs Tom and Jerry in Sutton Coldfield, a town near Birmingham. Both visited the Terry Arthur School in Sutton Coldfield, but in different classes. Although, they switched their names and played pranks on the teachers. James finished the first book of Harry Potter as their mother told them about an audition in Leeds. They love being actors since their childhood. The family drove to Leeds. After the audition and few days later, the whole family was in the living room and mother Phelps on the phone. Her answer of the question: “Is the mother of the Weasley twins there?” was “No.” They got the roles of Fred and George Weasley and dyed their brown hairs in ginger, also the eye brows. At the beginning of the shootings, their height was ca. 5’5 and now 6’3.
The Phelps twins took the stage to enthusiastic cheers from the Potterheads in the audience, and then dug right into fan questions. As expected, most of the questions involved Harry Potter. From what series character they would hang out with for a day (James said Fluffy, Oliver said Kreacher) to if they ever switched playing each other’s characters when no one was paying attention, the audience received some insightful and entertaining answers. They talked about their time at the Harry Potter theme park as well, and what it was like to revisit their characters after movie shooting was done.
Like their movie characters, James and Oliver like to play jokes. One particularly entertaining one that they shared involved tricking one of the makeup girls into thinking she had a $1000+ parking ticket. They called her pretending to be a bill collector and she wanted to question the ticket. The website they gave her for questioning the ticket was oliverphelpsgotyou.com. Her response? “You [beeeeeeep].”
They also said it was wonderful to have each other when they first started filming because it was scary at first and having a familiar face around helped. One of the craziest questions was: “If you could spend the day with JFK or President Lincoln, what would you do and what day would it be on?” They were both rather perplexed by that one.
Sadly, neither of them is a redhead anymore. But still, Minneapolis was very pleased to have them as special guests and they enjoyed being there and sharing their stories.
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