Order of the Phoenix is also dealing with elements of politics, isn’t it?

DAVID YATES: Yes, especially the politics of the Ministry of Magic, which is a powerful body that is dealing with this outside threat of the potential return of Voldemort, and instead of a constructive strategic response, they end up closing down and ultimately stifling the wizarding community by kind of taking liberal measures and making them conservative measures. An interesting idea in the story is how fear can sometimes make people do terrible things to their own community and society. We’re not trying to parallel anything, we’re just trying to look at what fear does to people and how it sometimes affects people of authority with the responsibility of leadership. Jo’s book, the fifth book, is just rich with lots of lovely stuff and we try and reflect that.

When you joined the film, how did you acclimate yourself with the cast?

Right at the beginning, you always have these rehearsals with any actor you work with. With Dan, in particular, who had to go through this quite complex journey. We sat down several months before we started shooting. We would meet every week and we would talk about what Harry was dealing with. One of the things we did, and it sounds quite intense for a family film, is we brought in a bereavement counselor to talk to us about how Harry Potter dealt with witnessing the death of Cedric [Diggory]. This woman came in to talk to both of us about how people deal with quite intense emotional and disturbing experiences. She deals with people in the police and the rescue services who every day witnessed trauma and death, and she kind of showed us how people process that and deal with that and what it does to them. At the start of our story, and it kind of hangs over the story like a shadow, Harry is having to come to terms with what he witnessed, the tragedy he’s seen and it’s affected him. Dan was able to glean quite a lot from what she showed us and what she’d seen talking to people. That was kind of useful and helpful in the kind of development of Harry’s journey in our film. And the truth is, you never stop talking. Every day. I love working with actors and I love their interpretations of characters. Even on the day of shooting, you never stop talking. It’s a constant dialogue.