The Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts will be streaming starting New Year’s Day. The cast reunited to talk about their time on set creating the eight beloved Harry Potter movies, and some clips have already revealed old drama—like Emma Watson’s unrequited crush on Tom Felton. Rumors of romance have always circulated around the Hogwarts crew, but in real life they’ve all mostly found love outside of the call sheet.
These days, Emma Watson has been linked to business owner Leo Robinton. Rupert Grint and his longtime girlfriend, actress Georgia Groome, are expecting a baby together. And Daniel Radcliffe is in New York with his girlfriend of nearly nine years, actress Erin Darke. Below, everything to know about the low-key couple, from their movie meet-cute to how they responded to Radcliffe’s coronavirus hoax.
Darke is an actress.
You may recognize Darke, who was born in Flint, Michigan, from her work in numerous movies and TV shows. She’s acted in films including the Beach Boys biopic Love & Mercy and Oscar-nominated Still Alice. On the TV side, she’s taken on recurring roles in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Good Girls Revolt.
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She met Radcliffe while working on a movie together in 2012.
The two fellow actors met on the set of their 2013 film Kill Your Darlings. Radcliffe, 30, opened up to People about the first time he met Darke, 35. “It’ll be a hell of a story to tell our kids one day because of what our characters do with each other,” he said, addressing a sex scene the couple has in the film. “Our characters are meeting and flirting with each other, so there is this kind of sweet record of us just meeting for the first time and flirting.”
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In a 2015 interview with Playboy, Radcliffe also opened up about his immediate attraction to Darke during their first scene together. “There’s no acting going on—not from my end, anyway,” he told the outlet. “There’s a moment when she makes me laugh, and I’m laughing as me and not as my character. She was incredibly funny and smart. I knew I was in trouble.”
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Darke later told People that one of the first things she and Radcliffe bonded over was “how much we really love what we do, and there’s something that’s really beautiful and really lovely about being with someone who just innately understands that about you.” She added, “We’re both incredibly supportive of the other person’s career.”
She’s a sports fan.
When Darke isn’t acting, one of her passions is sports. Her Twitter bio states that she’s a “Fantasy football enthusiast” and “Devoted Red Wings fan.” In 2018, Radcliffe mentioned that his girlfriend is also a Detroit Lions fan. “My girlfriend is from Michigan, so there’s always a Lions game on Thanksgiving,” he said on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “With the misery or joy that that entails.”
Radcliffe openly praises his longtime girlfriend.
While the couple doesn’t make many appearances in the tabloids, Radcliffe has never been shy about professing his love for Darke. He referred to her as his best friend in a 2014 interview with Us Weekly. “I think that’s the kind of relationship I always aspire to have with someone I’m in a relationship with. You want that person to be your best friend,” he explained. “In the case of Erin, we definitely are.”
Six years after the fact, the pair is still going strong. “I grew up doing lots of things where I thought, ‘This is super nerdy. I’ll never be able to do this around a girl,'” Radcliffe told Radio Times magazine earlier this year. “But that’s the wonderful thing about the moment you find the relationship you’re meant to be in. It’s like, ‘Oh, I can do all of that stuff and you don’t mind. And you actually think it’s fun, too. This is fantastic!'”
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Recently, she and Radcliffe were victims of a coronavirus hoax.
In March, a Twitter account with the handle @BBCNewsTonight reported that Radcliffe was “the first famous person to be publicly confirmed” with a case of coronavirus. Twitter eventually suspended the account and BuzzFeed spoke to the people behind the hoax, but not before the news had gotten to Radcliffe and Darke directly.
The couple spoke to Vulture about the incident and gave an update on their quarantine set-up in Radcliffe’s New York apartment. “We’re both in the situation where we’ve never been more grateful not to have a kid or more annoyed that we don’t have a dog,” Radcliffe joked about their sheltering-at-home situation. “But generally speaking, compared to a lot of people, we are very, very much okay.” He admitted that he was “quite amused” by the hoax at first. “It’s not the first time I’ve had something crazy written about me,” Radcliffe said. Darke added, “Dating a famous person teaches you very quickly that shit is weird sometimes. People are weird with fame sometimes.”
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They’re still going strong but have no wedding plans yet.
Darke and Radcliffe have been together for the better part of a decade, but there’s no wedding in the works. “We’re at the point now where I’ve seen my own wedding reported several times,” she said to Vulture. “You do start to dismiss things you read about your partner if you’re pretty sure they’re not true. I spent a week once having to text all my family members being like, ‘I promise if I’m getting married, you will find out from me and not Us Weekly.'”
Radcliffe added that his Harry Potter co-stars often get thrown into their fictional nuptials. “At least three different times, somebody has written that we’re getting married, and Emma Watson is gonna be the maid of honor, and Rupert Grint is my best man, and we’re getting married on a lake in Michigan,” Radcliffe told the outlet. For now, the couple says they’re “okay with (tabloids’) lack of interest” in their romance. “We’re boring to them. Ninety percent of the paparazzi photos of us are getting coffee,” Darke joked. She added, “You can only sell so many photos of two people waiting for an Uber.”
Radcliffe has had other loves.
In another moment of confession during the reunion, Radcliffe admitted he had a crush on Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange. The actress brought an autograph to the reunion that she asked Daniel Radcliffe to sign after they wrapped on The Deathly Hallows Part II, released in 2011. Radcliffe read the inscription aloud, visibly embarrassed.
“Dear HBC, it was a pleasure being your co-star and ‘coaster’ — in the sense that I always ended up holding your coffee,” he read. “I do love you and I wish I was born 10 years earlier as I might’ve have been in with a chance. Thanks for being cool.”
A very sweet crush, but probably not something Darke has to worry about.
Savannah Walsh Editorial Fellow Savannah Walsh is an Editorial Fellow at ELLE.com.
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