Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes has new treats.
“Harry Potter” stars James and Oliver Phelps, who played mischievous twins Fred and George Weasley in all eight movies, return to host Season 2 of Food Network show, “Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking.”
“I’m the kind of person that will forget to put the oven on preheat. And then I’m like ‘ah, it’ll be alright!’” James, 39, told The Post.
Returning Sunday, Nov. 2 (8 p.m.) and streaming the next day on HBO Max and Discovery+, the Harry Potter-themed baking competition series is judged by Carla Hall and Jozef Youssef, and features teams of pastry chefs making edible creations that tie into the Wizarding World.
“Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking” films on location at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Watford, England, where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.
“When we were filming in The Great Hall, I literally had a flashback to when we were filming the first movie,” said James.
He recalled that the twins’ birthday fell during the production schedule. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” director Chris Columbus, “got us to stand on the table, and got over 500 kids in the Great Hall to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to us. I completely forgot about that, until we were filming this.”
He noted, “So, that was quite cool to remember.”
While walking around the Potter set filming “Wizards of Baking,” Oliver, 39, didn’t think he’d ever be in there again, “let alone filming a TV show,” he told The Post. “It transports you back.”
One moment he remembered was an awkward moment with controversial author JK Rowling.
There used to be a lot of “waiting around” on the set of the movies, which were in theaters between 2001 and 2011. The Phelps twins often hung out in Rupert Grint’s dressing room, and one day they made a “crossbow, to play darts with.”
“We’re lining up this crossbow….just as JK Rowling stuck her head around the door to say hello. We’re like ‘hello!’ just as the dart goes into the dartboard,” Oliver told The Post. “She went, ‘I’ll come back later.’ At the time, we were like, ‘It’s the boss! What are we gonna do?’”
James quipped that they could say they were “trying to channel” the spirit of the troublemaking Fred and George.
Several of their former “Potter” co-stars also joined them to guest judge on Season 2 of “Wizards of Baking,” including Afshan Azad (who played Padma Patil), Devon Murray (who played Seamus Finnigan), and Warwick Davis (who played professor Flitwick and Griphook).
“It was nice catching up with these guys we’ve known since we were kids,” said James.
But, that made for an amusing moment when Azad came to guest on the show.
“We’ve always had a very hard banter with each other,” he explained. “And when we saw each other for this, we’re like, ‘Are we nice to each other now, or should we carry on?’”
They “carried on” by mocking each other, until a concerned producer intervened.
“One of the producers was like, ‘just making sure everything’s okay?’ And I was like, ‘yeah, it’s just the way we talk to each other!’ It’s like old friends from college or high school. You just pick up where you left off.”
The brothers regularly catch up with their former co-stars, recently grabbing dinner with Bonnie Wright, who played their onscreen sister, Ginny.
“And we played golf with Tom Felton a couple of weeks ago,” said James.
“Unfortunately” they won’t be in New York to catch Felton’s Broadway debut, as he’s reprising the role of Draco Malfoy onstage in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
“I’ve seen the show before, and I know he’s going to have a great time doing it. Good luck to him,” said Oliver. “[The bond with the cast is] one of those things like people in school, where you dip in and out. It’s just funny, when we do it, it’s in public. People are looking. That’s the only difference.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
