Also please share thoughts on absolute queen, Madina Frey
SHE 💕🌹
Madina's such a wonderful Rose, such a perfect blend of both Hermione and Ron. If I had to sum her up in one word, I think it would be playful? You can see it right from the very first scene: the way she greets James with finger guns, how she bounds after Ron and makes a big show of complaining about how embarrassing he's being and then folds her arms and raises her eyebrows at him, as if daring him to contradict her, or the way she mimics Hermione's “I had complete faith in you” in a teasing way.
She's also brimming with confidence. When she first gets on the Hogwarts Express with Albus, it's clear that she has this all planned out, she says that she’s a Granger-Weasley with a lot of grandeur, fully confident that she’ll be the most popular person in her year because how could she not be?
And there's so much to unpack in her friendship with Albus. She's very clearly the leader of the two and Albus has been more than happy to tag along and let her take charge up until that point (Vincent's Albus is very introverted and shy, and I get the feeling that she must've been pretty protective over him). So she doesn't know what to do when he decides to stay with Scorpius in the carriage: Albus is so clearly charmed by Scorpius and she doesn't understand or like it at all, and she's very hurt when Albus says that he's not expecting her to stay. She bristles immediately, and there's something almost petulant about the way she shouts “fine!” and runs off. She feels betrayed, and that feeling only gets worse when Albus is sorted into Slytherin—so she cuts ties with him from that moment onwards. She's not cruel to him the way the other students are, she doesn't participate in the bullying, but she very pointedly stays quiet whenever it happens. When Albus tries to get away from his laughing classmates after the wand dance, distressed and near tears, he bumps into her and she barely glances at him before joining them.
She's definitely the kind of Rose that people would find hard to forgive and like, but personally I think she's fine? In the sense that she's just acting her age, she's eleven when the play starts. She judges harshly and struggles to forgive. And I can forgive her for that, and even understand.
She also gets quieter as the years go on: there's not a lot of room to give Rose some proper character development (thank you once again @ CC writers, we definitely needed act 4 scene 14 instead of this), but you can see hints of it in Madina's Rose. One of the most interesting scenes for her (and I wish I'd been able to see it up close, I feel like I've missed a lot) is just after In Trouble (Again), when the gang are all sitting on the stairs next to McGonagall's office, eavesdropping. Rose is distressed when she hears McGonagall tell Hermione that her children didn't exist in these alternate realities, she clutches the banister with both hands, clearly upset—and no one tries to comfort her or reach out to her. The boys are all too busy talking amongst themselves. I felt this intense sense of loneliness when I saw it, and it made me wonder just how honest and deep these friendships are—these friendships that she made and kept at the cost of pushing Albus away and hurting him. There's a lot to explore there.
But overall she's fun, she's warm, she's fierce, and I'd say she takes after Ron the most, which I love ❤️ I can't wait to see her again and learn more about her!!
I only got to speak to Madina herself very briefly the first time I saw CC Hamburg but she was so lovely, an absolute angel 🥺 I wish my German had been good enough to really express how much I loved her Rose, but at least I managed to say that I found her very sweet and we had a nice lil chat about that—it was only the second preview and you could see how excited and proud the whole cast were, they stayed at the theatre for ages just talking to people even though they must've been exhausted. Madina came out with Elvin, Felix, Felicitas, and Robin, so we sort of just spoke to all of them at the same time—I remember at one point we all got sidetracked because they noticed my friends and I had programs with the full cast list at the back (including first and second covers, etc) and they got super excited about seeing their names on there, especially Elvin 🥺 truly A Nice Day
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