A new scene from Tom Felton's miniseries Full Circle, which will debut on DirecTV this Wednesday, was released online, where it focused on his character Tim and a past relationship with an older woman, played by Ally Sheedy.



Tom recently talked to I Am Rogue and CraveOnline about his role in Full Circle, the upcoming TNT series Murder in the First which was just greenlit to begin production in January, and of course portraying Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series. Highlights from both interviews can be read here.

CraveOnline: One thing I always thought about the Harry Potter movies is that Draco works harder at hating Harry than he ever works at being a good wizard. Did you ever think about that?
Tom Felton: It’s very true. He has a, what’s the expression, bee in his bonnet. He gets more frustration from seeing someone else do well than he has any desire to do well himself. It’s definitely a negative thing to have as a personality trait, right?

Right, if he just worked at being a good wizard, maybe he would be better than Harry.
Tom: Yeah, just literally tunnel vision and got on with his own stuff. It’s definitely a trait that I think maybe Jo [Rowling] was trying to highlight. Anyone that has that mentality is never really going to go that far in life because you spend more time hating on someone else than you do caring about your own life.

Is it only because he was placed in Slytherin? It seems like Slytherin is where all the evil wizards come from.
Tom: I don’t know, I’ve heard lots of different fan theories. All the true fans, when I say he’s a villain, he’s a bad guy, they jump to his defense and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. He’s a sweet guy. He’s misunderstood. He’s a product of his parents. He has the worst parents possible. He didn’t have a choice. He was kind of forced into this world that he doesn’t want to be in.”

The nice thing about his character is you see in the last two films that there’s a real indecision there, whether this is the life for him. He has a nice moment where he kind of saves Harry a little bit. It’s nice to see that actually at the end of it, oddly, excuse the pun, but it does come full circle slightly in his character. He’s quite an immature character in the best of times, but he does really grow up.

Have you shot “Murder in the First” yet?
Tom: Yeah, it’s all shot. I actually saw it last week. It’s incredible good, very different from this but I think American audiences will love it. I’m really hoping for good news so that we can come back and shoot the other nine episodes. [Note: TNT announced the pickup in September.]

When would you go back to shoot the series?
Tom: Keep your fingers crossed I’ll be back here in January for a few months.

IAR: To begin with, Full Circle is a very unusual TV project. Were you sold on doing it once they told you that Neil LaBute created the series?
Tom Felton: I’m glad someone asked that because that’s pretty much how it was. I had said to people for years that I’d love to do some really high quality TV and my agent brought me this and said, "You’re doing it." But as soon as I heard that Neil actually wrote it I was pretty keen. In fact, after reading the first few pages I really kind of got to see the quality of it. You don’t want to be going into something like this where the dialogue is not first class and I think this is about as good as it gets, so that really lends itself well when you’re doing something like this.

When you’re working with a script written by Neil LaBute, do you feel a certain responsibility to say every line exactly as it is on the page?
Felton: Yes and no, definitely with the choice of phrases and possibly the specific words. The nice thing about it is that sometimes you can mix it up. You can say the line at the end of the page at the beginning and hopefully it works magically. When it comes to dialogue I’m used to waiting for the other person to finish their line before starting mine and with Neil’s dialogue it definitely lends itself to a completely different performance. You can almost keep rationing off your lines and be completely vacant of what the other person in saying. Then some times saying hardly anything and you’re just kind of looking at each other. It was definitely very unique. I’ve never seen or read anything like it. I still haven’t seen it so I’m very excited for that. There was a uniqueness that was the allure for me.

In what way was it a challenge?
Felton: Several. The first one specifically was remembering exactly all the dialogue because I had never done anything like that as far as performing that amount of dialogue in one day. It was pretty much the ultimate contrast from filming on Harry Potter where you might be lucky if you got ten seconds done in a day. So suddenly we’re shooting 25 minutes of footage, and there were no real scenes. We start at the beginning and we ran it all the way to the end and we did that like 50 times with multiple cameras shooting. That was the first challenge I think, which was just the sheer intensity of the surroundings. The other part of it was that I didn’t meet Minka (Kelly) until two days before we started shooting. We hadn’t done any rehearsals, we had only done a couple of Skype reads together to try and familiarize ourselves with each other, but with something like this that is so heavily relied on chemistry we just lucked out. We got on very well, we were both on the same page at the same time, and we had a great director. He managed to get the best performance out of both of us.

Can you talk about working with Minka Kelly and the relationship between Tim and Bridget?
Felton: Bridget and Tim have a unique relationship where they have had an intense relationship for a while. But things have changed and Minka’s character is trying to steady the ship and settle down, much to Tim’s disappointment really. Tim’s this younger guy who’s very loves strong and wears his heart on his sleeve. In one respect very happy that he’s sitting opposite her and in the other respect mortified that he might not be the one to spend his life with her. That’s the first episode and then in the tenth episode he is a slightly more mature and grounded individual I think. But that’s one of the nice things as well, the fact that his character does have a real arc, between episodes one and ten he really grows as a person.

Is it hard to really create a full arc of a character when you are only in two episodes of a series?
Felton: Yeah, again I like the uniqueness of the concept really and it’s kind of cool that Tim’s character is the only one that is in the first and the last episodes. Everyone else is happening episodically one after another. It’s really nice and I think it’s quite a cool thing to be the first face and the last face of the project. Also, to highlight again that he is quite different by the end but I don’t want to reveal what happens. There’s a real shift in his consciousness and I want to say less selfish in some respects, but I’ll let you be the judge.

CraveOnline: Between “Full Circle” and “Murder in the First” have you wanted television after your career in film?
Tom Felton: Yes and no. TV has come leaps and bounds since I started watching television, especially in the last five years. Bryan Cranston, Damian Lewis, these are all actors now that I think are the cream of the crop, the A-listers of their industry. If I could follow in their footsteps, I’d be very lucky and happy to do so. I think just because the quality has gotten so good and so engrossing that any actor would give their left arm for a chance to play some of the roles that are coming out now.

Now that you’ve done “Full Circle” and the “Murder in the First” pilot, how has television met or exceeded your expectations?
Tom: To be fair, “Full Circle” being the most unique, it’s hilarious how contrasting it is in regards to the Harry Potter script is 110 pages give or take, and it would take six to seven months to do principal photography. There would be days where you would literally shoot nothing.

Were those scripts really only 110 pages?
Tom: Well, give or take. Maybe some of the longer ones were maybe 120, 130. Don’t quote me, but just highlighting the fact that if you have all the time, it just changes the dynamic. The fact that we have such limited time really brought new emotions, hopefully ones that supported the performances of the characters. I’ve never had a day filming like I was completely exhausted and incredibly satisfied at the same time. If you did 10 episodes like this, you’d be on the floor. But we were all very lucky for our little interludes I think.

How much has changed when we do come back to Tim?
Tom: Quite a bit. That’s a unique thing as well. I don’t think many characters quite have the same arc because there is quite a time gap between episode one and 10. He really is a different character. Though he is Tim, he’s matured a lot in those months away. I think he’s come to terms with the fact that he’s not going to be with the love of his life. I don’t know, there’s definitely a more mature side of him and more accepting side. There’s a more volatile side in the first episode where he’s very indecisive about how he feels I think, whereas in the 10th there’s a lot more certainty and a lot more drive towards his performance.

He gets a text in the second episode, so are there more mentions of Tim peppered throughout the series?
Tom: I don’t believe so. I think it’s the second episode, that’s the only one. Don’t quote me but I’m pretty sure it’s just that one.

Casey O