Proof that you really shouldn’t ask J.K. Rowling to change something in her books
Are you ready for a side of J.K. Rowling you’ve never seen before? It appears the author might have a dark side. She’s all smiles with her fans on Twitter, sharing Harry Potter tidbits from the fictional wizarding world she’s built through the years. But if you cross her, she won’t let you forget it — a lesson Stephen Fry learned the hard way.
Fry is the narrator of the UK Harry Potter audiobooks (not to be confused with Jim Dale, the voice of the US books). But apparently when he first met Rowling, he didn’t think much of Harry Potter beyond it being a children’s novel with an upcoming sequel.
“Good for you,” he told the author of her newfound success. Of course, he had no idea that Rowling’s little children’s book would go on to become one of the most-loved book (and movie) series of all time.
Flash forward a few years later, when Fry was recording the audiobook for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He was struggling to say the sentence “Harry pocketed it,” and kept saying “Harry pocketeded it.” To be fair, it IS a mouthful of letters.
What’s an audiobook narrator to do? He gave J.K. Rowling a call and asked if she would change the phrase to “Harry put it in his pocket,” a sentence much easier to say. According to the Tumblr Petty Revenge Stories, “[Rowling] thought for a moment, then said ‘no’, and hung up.”
To get through the recording, Fry had to say the phrase veeery slowly, but he pulled it off. But here’s the kicker: “The phrase ‘Harry pocketed it’ appeared in the next four books,” ensuring that Fry would encounter the troublesome word again. Burn!
Lesson learned: Don’t mess with J.K. Rowling!
(Featured image via Flickr.)