J.K. Rowling Just Revealed a Secret About Snape That Alan Rickman Never Did

In this Tuesday, June 9, 2015 file photo, actor Alan Rickman attends The Public Theater's Annual Gala at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in New York. British actor Alan Rickman, whose career ranged from Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company to the “Harry Potter” films, has died. He was 69. Rickman’s family said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that the actor had died after a battle with cancer. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/688992186457788416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

“Always” is in reference to a scene in the final Harry Potter book where Snape says he was in love with Harry’s mother, Lily.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/688992917730521088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

On several occasions, Rickman had to hide knowledge from reporters about the Harry Potter story. In the prior interview, he said he had a “little piece of information, which I always said I would never share with anybody and never have, and never will.”

“Certainly, I did say I needed to talk to her before I could get a handle on how to play it, and we did have a phone conversation,” he added. “She certainly didn’t tell me what the end of the story was going to be in any way at all, so I was having to buy the books along with everybody else to find out, ‘And now what?’”

Rickman in 2011 said it was crucial to learn this information, as it helped shape his acting of the character.

“[It] helped me think that he was more complicated and that the story was not going to be as straight down the line as everybody thought,” Rickman told HitFix at the time. “If you remember when I did the first film she'd only written three or four books, so nobody knew where it was really going except her. And it was important for her that I know something, but she only gave me a tiny piece of information which helped me think it was a more ambiguous route.”