Don’t expecto Daniel Radcliffe to show up in “The Lego Movie 2.”
The follow-up to the wildly successful “Lego Movie” is packed full of typically riddikulus cameos. Among director Mike Mitchell’s favorite sequences are when Chris Pratt’s perpetually upbeat Emmet Brickowski walks through a “Mad Max”-like hellscape and when Tiffany Haddish’s Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi convincingly sings about how “not evil” she is.
The filmmakers were able to “cram in” pretty much every wild idea for a cameo they had, Mitchell said, but there was one scene that they unfortunately had to obliviate:
“Gary Potter was the only one.”
According to Mitchell, “Lego Movie 2” originally involved a joke “about an unlicensed character, Gary Potter, that I don’t think made it into the film, that made everyone laugh.”
“It was Harry Potter’s cousin,” he explained. “It was an unlicensed character. He didn’t make it in.”
Wait, Gary Potter? “Lego Movie 2” doesn’t mess around with its cameos; actual “Justice League” actors Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa voice their respective characters in the movie. Would Gary Potter have been played by the Boy Who Lived himself, (gasp!), Daniel Radcliffe?
“Oh yeah, we were definitely going to go out to Daniel. And he was game, but unfortunately his character got cut,” Mitchell said, “I don’t remember
why it happened. I think it was because we didn’t want to upset any ‘Harry Potter’ fans. They have such a following, so we decided to upset the ‘Mary Poppins’ fans. We just made Larry Poppins.”
It’s easy to see why the filmmakers hesitated on Gary, assuming the cut was made so as to not upset the Potter fanbase. Just look at the bloodthirsty reactions to the latest “Fantastic Beasts” film. Before the movie premiered, people were upset about perceived plot holes (and then angrier after a truly porous “Beasts” was released). Perhaps filmmakers surmised that messing with fervent fans of the treasured Harry wasn’t worth it.