Edgar Allan Poe

Years after playing Potter's tormenter, the boy wizard's spoiled Muggle cousin Dudley, actor Harry Melling emerges as a dramatic force in The Pale Blue Eye, ...

"It can be a very complicated scene, and there's lots going on, but it was very focused, and we were allowed to play the scene in the way that we wanted." "It's a big scene, and the focus needs to be there in the room," Melling continues. So it was really about, how do we make him warm and humorous, someone who is prone to falling in love, someone who is quite vulnerable and heartbreaking, and who looks to Landor as a father figure, something that he never had?" "We were aware that most people who come to this movie know Poe as the master of the macabre, and you would expect Poe to be someone who's quite dark and who lived in the shadows," the filmmaker says. "But also, we wanted him not only to be the mad genius or the tormented artist, but we wanted to exploit his personal struggles, the fact that he was an orphan, the fact that he does feel somewhat ostracized from the other cadets at West Point and certainly those in charge. "We'd turn up and just see what would happen on its feet and what revealed itself to us," Melling notes. "I think the best thing you can do is jump and see what happens and to risk." On The Pale Blue Eye, he decided to throw himself into the scene. "I think everyone does naturally want to get it right, and actually, that's probably the worst thing you can do as an actor," he explains. "Which I kind of loved," he quickly adds. "My experience was unique in terms of I wasn't in it throughout the entire shoot," the actor, 33, tells EW over Zoom from Los Angeles — now much taller and leaner compared to the plump, rosy-cheeked child with a haughty smirk movie-goers have been used to. The students of this prestigious boy's club close ranks, prompting Landor to enlist the aid of someone on the inside to dig up the goods: Melling's Poe, a lad who may have the verbal acrobatics of a burgeoning poet but is far from penning the kind of macabre works that would change the literary landscape.