The Secret to Harry Potter： JK Rowling's 2000 Interview ｜ 60 Minutes Australia

Pottermania is sweeping the world. Broomsticks wherever you turn. Little witches and wizards are copying Harry Potter's spells in over 200 countries. The Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the series of seven, has made J.K. Rowling, the enchantress who created Harry, the most successful author ever. Now that's magic. How much do you draw on yourself in writing Harry? How much do you see of yourself in Harry Potter? I think he's a much better person than I am. He's brave and I deeply admire courage. I wouldn't say I'm a coward, but there again I wouldn't say that if something nasty was lurking around a castle at midnight, I would be the first one to leap out of bed and say, hey, let's go check that out. Unless you had that wand in your hand. With a wand in my hand, yeah, and a good solid book of spells under my elbow, maybe I would, I don't know. At London's King's Cross station, Joanne Rowling arrived in a very good replica of Harry Potter's car to say hello to her British fans as she travelled north to Scotland in an equally good mock-up of Harry's train, the Hogwarts Express. Kids had come from everywhere. So what are you doing here in London? We came for a holiday. And you didn't plan it around the arrival of book number four, did you? A little bit. You did, really? Yes. You've been looking forward to it that much? Yes. I used to read Roald Dahl, but I don't like him anymore. I like these books instead. Really? Now why is Harry more exciting? It's more exciting because it's made like magic and he's doing like close to being expelled and stuff like that. Aboard the Hogwarts Express, I got stuck into The Goblet of Fire, a real doorstopper at almost 650 pages. For the author, it was a time to muse on how Harry Potter made his way into her life exactly 10 years ago. I was sitting on a delayed train going from Manchester to London and Harry just, he just came. He just came out of nowhere. And I felt this very physical rush of excitement. I'd never felt so excited about an idea. And I think the main reason I was so excited, I just thought that would be such fun to write. Harry Potter is an orphan who goes to wizard school and discovers he has magical powers. A hundred thousand witches and wizards were taking their places in the seats which rose in levels around the long oval pitch. Everything was suffused with a mysterious golden light that seemed to come from the stadium itself. The pitch looked smooth as velvet from their lofty position. Is it the power of magic or the powerlessness of children? That's why I think they are so drawn to magic because children are, even happy children, are extraordinarily powerless. More powerless than probably they will ever be again in their lives. You have the weight of expectation from your parents. You want to please them. And I would say that's why the orphan is such a, this perennial hero figure in children's literature particularly. First of all, he or she is going to engage the reader's sympathies. It's always, it's tragic to all of us thinking of a parentless child but also because they're liberated, you know, and the reader can vicariously experience not having to live up to anyone else's expectations. You're out there on your own and it is scary and it is sad but it's also, as I say, incredibly liberating. The Boy Wizard has charmed not only children but their parents as well. Over a third of the books sold are bought by adults who want a return to the fantasy world of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. But none of these classics has come close to the fastest-selling title in publishing history. And the latest, The Goblet of Fire, is breaking all records. And if this book sells as well as the first three, how many copies of Harry Potter stories might have been sold by the end of the year? We were. We're already, as of today, up to 40 million. But I would say by the end of the year, we've got to be talking an easy 50 million. After watching the Harry Potter books earn hundreds of millions of dollars, the London literary agent Christopher Little is quite chuffed that he signed J.K. Rowling when so many others wouldn't. When quite a few others passed on Joanne's talent, you saw something in Harry Potter. Oh yeah. From the very first moment that I read it, there's that very special feeling that you've got something extraordinary. How many publishers turned down the first book? I think it was 11. And they'd been turned down before they came to me too. So she'd been turned down by another agent and I think three publishers before they came to me. The most wonderful moment in all of it was when Christopher Little phoned me at eight o'clock in the evening one night and said to me, we've got to deal with Bloomsbury. That was the best moment. It wasn't a very high ceiling in my flat, but I'm not a very tall person and I touched it. I swear to you, I jumped in the sky and I jumped into the air and I touched that ceiling. And next day I thought, you can't have done and I tried to do it and I couldn't. I just flew. It was the best moment of anything that's happened since. And that was when I thought, yep, I'm a writer, I'm going to be published. What few readers know is just how tough a struggle it was for Joanne Rowling to complete the first Harry Potter story. She was broke. Her marriage had fallen apart and she had a baby daughter to look after. Joanne would come to this cafe and while her baby slept beside her, she wrote Harry's story in longhand. I can't begin to wonder how you could juggle the sheer workload of motherhood and writing a book. It's easy, you just don't do housework. But you've got to feed the baby, take care of the baby. Oh, I fed the baby and I took care of the baby, yep. And then when she went to sleep at night, I would write. And I'm not joking about the housework. Something I had to give and it was the bit I found most boring. How hard were those few bleak years of your life? It is not easy being very broke and having sole responsibility, both day to day and financial for a child. But she is the best thing that ever happened to me and my daughter. And difficult though that time was, I had this great kid. I had great friends. I was still doing what I loved best. I never crossed my mind that this thing that I saw as my wonderful... Well, it was my life's ambition, but I felt it was maybe very selfish to continue to pursue it when I did have to raise a child. Never crossed my mind Harry would be the thing that brought me money. Harry's magic wand has made Joanne so wealthy she could buy a castle like this if she wanted to. It's in these ancient places, rich in folklore and archaic names that she finds inspiration. Well, the English language, you know, it's very rich in that way. So I have a lot of fun with my names. And a lot of them are old English names. Dumbledore and Hagrid are old English words that mean something specific. How about Harry? Where did you find Harry? Well, Harry is my favourite boy's name. Had I given birth to a boy, even though I'd been writing the Harry Potter books for three years, there was a good chance I would have called him Harry and then had to change the fictional Harry's name because I couldn't have done that to my son, you know, written him into a book. He's an ordinary boy in extraordinary circumstances. That's what Harry is. And he rises to the challenge. And that's what every child really would like to do would be jump on the broomstick and whoosh over that castle. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? I'd love to. The night before the launch of the Goblet of Fire in London, children slept over in the city's biggest bookshop, desperate to get their hands on the first copies. This was all part of the Harry Potter hype, a kind of cult like Pokemon. But rarely has pure word of mouth caused such excitement among children. Are you girls going to stay up just for Harry Potter? Yeah. Almost? Yeah. Does he do the right thing? Yeah. Well, no. Sometimes he's naughty. When Harry looks into the mirror and is longing for his parents, is that you were seeing in the mirror? Yes, definitely. Yes, that very much came from my own experience of losing my mother. I think anyone who's been bereaved, who has got someone very close to them would say the same thing. And kids are actually very touched by that because they know that Harry is the one who's seeing something that cannot happen. The only thing I saw that I would be cautious reading to my six-year-old daughter, some of the death and the palpable fear at times might be a little disturbing for the youngest children. I agree with you. I mean, there are seven-year-olds out there, I'm sure, who could deal with it. There are seven-year-olds who might be terrified by it. So it's down to the parents' own judgment. But it's scary for a reason. It's not scary just because, hey, look, I can frighten you. I mean, I am talking about incredibly evil character. And my feeling is you are morally obliged when you're doing that to show how evil it is to take a human life, how indefensible that is. The orphan Harry Potter was just 11 when he first went to wizard school. But with each new book, he's a year older, just like the children growing up with him. In book four, there are the first stirrings of hormones. And Harry even gets a kiss. Is this where the writing... Yeah, only a very chaste kiss, though. There's a valuable lesson there for boys everywhere. Don't leave it too long to ask her out. That's the lesson. That's the moral lesson there. Yes, exactly. Harry and Ron, they just waste too much time. You've got to be a bit more assertive in this life. Girls don't hang around. But we'll have to wait to book five to see how Harry really is. To see whether he actually, yeah, has learned his lesson. The kids are Harry Potter's biggest fans. But they'll also be his toughest critics, waiting to judge if the next story is as good as the last one. If Harry's spoiled by the spin-off toys, the fame, even the Hollywood movie due out next year. For now, shouldn't we all applaud that so many children who've all but given up reading are discovering the joy of books? I've met quite a few kids who've actually said it's the first book they ever finished for themselves, again. And that's worth bucket loads of trophies, isn't it? That's the best. But do you hope also that kids will go on reading other books even when they've finished with Harry Potter? That would be the best, absolutely. If I thought that I had persuaded even one person that a book was preferable to a PlayStation, I'd feel I wasn't wasting space on this earth. That would be the best. Hello, I'm Tara Brown. Thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia. Subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week. And don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on ninenow.com.au and the Nine Now app.