James and Oliver Phelps Talk “Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking”
James and Oliver Phelps, who played the infamous Weasley twins in the Harry Potter films, are back on our screens as hosts of the wizarding world–inspired baking show Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, and they’ve spoken about why they decided to take part in the show and their time back at Leavesden Studios to film it.
The show follows professional pastry chefs who create a whole host of spectacular Potter-themed bakes, with professional chefs Carla Hall and Jozef Youssef as the judges.
Carla Hall, Jozef Youssef, James Phelps, and Oliver Phelps (Credit: Food Network).
Talking to Variety, Oliver said they are “massive fans of the whole baking TV [genre],” which contributed to why they said yes to hosting the show.
It’s one of the only programs that my daughter, who is 7, was like, ‘Oh my God, what are you doing? You’re doing this!’ So that was great. And also being able to work back in this world — we know it quite well, but not in this form — so it’s so great to be part of that.
Revealing that the show was one of the busiest sets he’s been on in his life, Oliver said it’s not a small production, with lots of crew working behind the scenes.
One thing we’ve learned over the years doing stuff with this franchise is they do it properly. When they said, ‘Oh we’re going to be filming in a kitchen,’ I thought, ‘OK, they’ll build a small little set.’ Not something that looks like it could be the kitchens at Hogwarts only with modern technology.
The show sees the professional chefs recreating memorable Potter scenes and magical artefacts. James discussed how “anything that’s Potter is never done by halves,” going on to mention the level of detail that’s gone into the on-screen kitchen in Wizards of Baking, with a fireplace that has burn marks so it looks like there’s really been a fire crackling in there.
Some of the enchanting cakes viewers should look out for include a Patronus that the Phelpses called “absolutely incredible,” speaking to the official Harry Potter website, was as well as crawling spiders that were actually peanut butter bon-bons.
Speaking to Parade about the show, Oliver discussed their hosting style, saying they were encouraged to be themselves and bring their “own humour.”
As well as the Phelps twins being hosts, other Potter alumni make appearances along the way, including Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), and Warwick Davis (Professor Flitwick/Griphook). The twins “had a great time” when filming with Bonnie for the show at Leavesden Studios, which is where the Potter franchise was filmed.
We say it’s like friends from high school or college or something like that. You may not speak every day, but you stay in contact in your life. It was cool just being back at the studio, reminiscing about times.
Wizards of Baking premiered on November 14 on Max and Food Network in the US, and it will be available in the United Kingdom in December on Prime Video.
