SnitchSeeker.com - Imelda Staunton reveals most difficult scene to film as Umbridge in Harry Potter saga

In a new interview, Imelda Staunton, who arguably played the most villainous character in the Harry Potter series so far by bringing Dolores Umbridge to life, discussed her feelings toward the former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and the advice she got from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix director David Yates about where her viciousness came from.

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Imelda Staunton: “I don’t have to have sympathy at all [for Umbridge], not in the slightest.”

“I think she’s a bloody monster and to be played as such. I don’t need to understand what she does, but from a character point of view, she believes she’s doing the absolute best for that school. Yet again, I have embraced a completely and utterly deluded woman.”

“[David Yates] made it very clear to me and said, ‘Look, this woman is into ethnic cleansing,’ and that’s quite political. He said, ‘That’s what this is, the pure-bloods and all that.’ I thought, ‘Christ, of course that’s what it is,’ so it became very serious. That’s when you go, ‘Right, I’m not just a lady in a very nice array of pink outfits. This is madness and cruelty dressed up.’”

Staunton admitted that the most excruciating scenes for her to film were Umbridge's detentions with Harry in Order of the Phoenix, and forcing him to scar his own hand to read, 'I Must Not Tell Lies.'

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Staunton: “That touched into something that you think, ‘Gosh, we’re all capable of great cruelty.’ It was a horrible, horrible feeling. Perhaps the worst part here — and really, throughout this fifth film — is that Umbridge, again, thinks she’s doing good. “She’s not sort of twirling her mustache and saying ‘Muahahaha,’ it’s the absolute and utter belief that actually it is going to help and that’s, of course, so much more frightening.”

Staunton also joked that when Umbridge was eventually imprisoned in Azkaban by the end of the series, her mental state would be somewhere between crying outrage at her incarceration and eventually breaking down from the captivity.