After portraying Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films, Alfred Enoch has been starring in US drama How to Get Away With Murder, and is currently taking a break from TV to play Edmund in a filmed, critically-acclaimed theatrical production of Shakespeare’s King Lear, which will also star Don Warrington.
Huffington Post took some time to catch up with Enoch as part of their Wise Words interview series:
When and where are you happiest?
Working. Theatre, particularly, being on stage. Not that I like it more than TV, but the release of being on stage is very exciting to me. There comes a point when you go on and it’s beyond any rehearsal or correction, you just have to commit. When you’re in the wings, and you have to go on, it can be very freeing, but you have to trust that you’ve done enough work. I find that exhilarating.
What would you tell your 13-year-old self?
Rejoice. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter that much. Throw yourself into it, and don’t check yourself.
What 3 things are at the top of your bucket list?
Go for a really long walk, Camino Del Santiago or something that big.
Do more plays.
Go back to Brazil.
What was the last good deed or act of kindness you received?
We’re about to start shooting the next season of this TV show ‘How to Get Away With Murder’, and everyone is so enthused to see each other. I’ve been in a different continent, other people have been travelling for work, scattered to the winds and now we return. There’s a lot of warmth when everyone gets back together.
Alfred also spoke about his wider beliefs – what happens when we die, good advice to live by, and occasions when he’s felt like we might live ‘in the presence of something bigger than ourselves':
“I love walking in London, and architecture is a big thing for me. I like the idea of the past happening in a certain place, I find it elusive and I love to try to bridge that gap between then and now. It can be a city, or equally the wilderness, but it can have that same feeling. In Malibu a while ago, I went for a walk with my parents, the sun was setting, and it just felt… immense.
Equally, I felt like that doing ‘Lear’ at the Royal Exchange. It’s a fantastic theatre, it has this dome and we used to come down from the dressing room, full of excitement and adrenalin, about to open a show, after all the work. I remember coming down the first few shows, looking up at glass dome which hangs over the theatre module, and feeling the wonder.”
Enoch’s appearance in King Lear: The Film will be available on demand in the UK and internationally for three months here. The film is a Talawa Theatre Company, Royal Exchange Theatre and Saffron Cherry TV production, in association with Lion Eyes TV and commissioned by The Space.
Royal Exchange Theatre gives more details:
“Captured at the Royal Exchange Theatre in May 2016, King Lear played to sell out theatre crowds during its run, winning 4 and 5 star reviews across the board and was described by the Guardian as ‘as close to definitive as can be’.
The original ‘intelligent and theatrical’ (Guardian) stage production was directed by Michael Buffong (A Raisin in the Sun, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, All My Sons) and was a co-production between Talawa Theatre Company and the Royal Exchange Theatre in association with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.”
Read more here, and watch a promo below!
Harry Potter’s Alfred Enoch (Dean Thomas) has begun a new chapter in his career–as law student, Wes Gibbins, in ABC’s new original series How to Get Away with Murder. Enoch plays one of the lead roles as a (more humble) student in a very competitive law school class. He and a few other highly ambitious students, along with their incredibly brilliant professor, and criminal defense attorney, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), become involved in a “life-changing” murder plot. From the producers and writers of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, the show is advertised to be America’s “next big obsession”. More can be read here.
Matt J. Rossano is head of the Psychology department at Southeastern Louisiana University. His new book, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, presents an evolutionary history of religion, drawing together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show the valuable adaptive purpose served by systemic belief in the supernatural. In the excerpt below, Rossano reminds us of the comfort of believing in things that may be irrational.
In April 2008, the phone rang at the home of Howard Enoch III. It was the U.S. Army. Howard’s father would finally be coming home. Sixty-three years earlier, in the waning days of World War II, Second Lieutenant Howard “Cliff” Enoch Jr. climbed into his P-51D Mustang fighter for a mission over Halle, Germany. He never returned. When the Iron Curtain enveloped the site where Enoch’s plane went down, the army declared his remains “unrecoverable.” But dedicated members of the U.S. Army’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command refused to give up on Cliff Enoch. In 2004, their review of crash sites in the former East Germany revealed suspicious plane fragments near the village of Doberschutz. Two years later, an onsite excavation team found what appeared to be human remains. The remains were flown to a laboratory in Hawaii for DNA analysis while the army continued to study the crash-site evidence. In the end it led to the phone call – and a burial with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Remarkable” is how Howard Enoch described the events of that spring. “I will now have a place…to know where he is…to be close to him,” he said. “Before this, I always thought of my father as a young man, sitting in a beautiful pasture in Germany, waiting for someone to bring him home – and that is what happened.” Commenting on the extraordinary effort the military expended in retrieving and identifying the remains, army spokesman Johnnie Webb explained that it was important for people to know that the “creed and tradition” in the military is to “leave no one behind.” The military, he said, would always do their utmost to “honor that promise.”
A bittersweet story. But most would agree that it ends as it should. It is right and good that the brave young soldier be returned to his home, his country, his family. The human desire to keep loved ones near, even in death, hardly needs an explanation or justification. Yet very little of this story can be defended as reasonable. Cold logic would correctly conclude that it is of no consequence where Cliff Enoch’s remains are buried, or even whether they are ever conclusively identified. After 60 years there’s no doubt that he is dead. His loved ones have gone on with their lives, and the skeletal remnants care nothing about the ground under which they lie. From a practical standpoint, a backyard cross is as good a remembrance place for the downed pilot as a cemetery plot. And wouldn’t the army’s limited resources be better spend on increased health and education benefits for veterans or better housing for military families, rather than on the retrieval of a few old bones?
Howard Enoch was welcoming back a man whom he had never known. Now 63 years old, he was born after his father Cliff was shot down. The fallen hero was but a picture on the wall, a story only rarely broached, more a myth and a spirit than a man. But is it fair to say that Howard and this spirit were strangers to each other? Was there no relationship here at all? The fact that it just feels wrong – cruel, even – to simply let Cliff Enoch’s bones lie anonymously in
Happy birthday wishes are in order for actor Alfie Enoch, who portrays the character of Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films. Mr. Enoch celebrates his 21st birthday today. Many happy returns, Alfie! Cheers!
O.K., this is cool: a new video excerpt is now online from the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVD hosted by Matt Lewis (Neville) and Alfie Enoch (Dean) showing the stunt training actor Rupert Grint did for his role as Ron Weasley, Quidditch Keeper. We also enjoyed seeing the crown on his t-shirt, for indeed, Weasley is our King ;)
The Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVD is being...
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As announced earlier, WB will be releasing Harry Potter: Wizarding World DVD game on December 1st, just a few days before the release of Half-Blood Prince and the special Ultimate Collector's editions DVDs. As such Amazon.com has a brand new trailer for the DVD game which you can see right here in our Video galleries. Last month we told of the details for the game which covers elements from Har...
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