Local Harry Potter Devotee Has Unusual Fan Experience

Editor’s Note: This story has been revised. An earlier version stated incorrectly how the press junket worked.

When her husband came home and told her that he was going to be working at the red carpet premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” in New York, Jennifer Elston, a self-described “giddy school girl” when it comes to all things Harry Potter, had a single thought: “I HAVE to be at that premiere.”

Elston, who together with her husband Christopher, owns  in Emmaus, told her husband he needed to do whatever he could to get her to the movie opening.

Chris Elston knew there was no way he could bring his wife to the premiere. So, he did the next best thing – he got his wife a job at the Harry Potter press junket at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on Sunday.

A press junket is when television interviewers all come to the same place on the same day to interview the stars of a film. For the stars, it’s a day of back-to-back interviews designed to promote the opening of their movie.

Chris Elston was already scheduled to be at the Harry Potter New York junket – his job was to be operating the video camera assigned to Rupert Grint, the actor who has portrayed the red-headed Ron Weasley since the original Harry Potter film, which opened in 2001.

The way the press junket worked was pretty simple, according to Jen Elston. Each star is assigned to a room with identical backdrops. There are two chairs in the room and two video cameras, one for the star and one for the interviewer. Each interviewer was allowed five minutes with the star. 

At the Deathly Hallows press junket there were three stars being interviewed Grint, Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and Michael Lewis (Neville Longbottom).

Jen Elston’s job: to stand in a hallway and watch the interviews being conducted on a video monitor. When it was clear that things were wrapping up (people standing up, microphones being removed), she was to run down the hallway to the room in question, pick up the tapes from the interview and bring them to the sound guy. 

Jen Elston said her job was something that they normally would have hired a teenager to do, but she didn’t care. Among the highlights of her time rubbing elbows with the stars: posing for a photo with Philadelphia news anchor Ukee Washington (she grew up near Philly) and getting her copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” signed by Grint.

Elston documented her day with her iPhone camera. She wasn't allowed to photograph the stars of the film.