5 days Ago By Emily Bootle
Who would play you in a film of your life? Imagine if, after all your unprecedented success and adventure, they got it all wrong. Someone who looked nothing like you. Who grew up in totally different circumstances.
Who couldn’t do your accent. You would feel pretty strongly – and, in the run-up, be pretty anxious.It is with this level of fervour that fans of Harry Potter have been worrying about the casting for the new HBO adaptation of the series, which is expected to debut in 2026, nearly two decades after the release of JK Rowling’s first book.
On the Reddit page r/HarryPotterOnHBO, which has more than 40,000 members, people have become obsessed with the casting of the series, constantly making suggestions for who could play beloved – and often fairly niche – characters. Andrew Scott as Barty Crouch Junior? Harry Styles as Gilderoy Lockhart? Sure, why not!Now some of that speculation can finally be put to rest, as the first cast members have been made official. Born in 1994, I’m firmly part of the Harry Potter generation – and to me, the announcement is the first surefire indication that the much-doubted series could be a smash hit.
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addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }The existence of the series at all has been subject to plenty of scepticism. Since it was announced in 2023, it’s been seen by many people as a cynical intellectual property grab, an opportunity to milk an already ubiquitous franchise for all it’s worth, in the vein of mega-budget series like The Rings of Power, or Disney’s tedious live-action remake project.Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Harry, Ron and Hermione in ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (2001) (Photo: Reuters)Against that backdrop, the casting has almost become a proxy for whether or not HBO is treating this treasured story with care and sensitivity.
This is important to both sides of the divided ranks of Harry Potter fans – ie the diehard purists and those who have denounced Rowling for her views on transgender rights. Needless to say this makes the whole thing doubly difficult.But the cast so far seems to be treading the line, with a host of mostly British talent, a loyalty to Rowling’s vision and some welcome freshness.
We don’t yet know who will play the three main characters – they will be (probably unknown) child actors. But we have John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, Janet McTeer as Professor McGonagall, Nick Frost as Hagrid, Luke Thallon as Quirrell and Paul Whitehouse as Argus Filch.These actors are not without controversy.
Lithgow is American, for one – though he won an Emmy for his turn as Winston Churchill in series one of The Crown, which is surely enough to redeem him. Essiedu, who is black and extremely good-looking, will play the sallow, slimy Snape, whose character arc from nemesis to anti-hero is arguably the most significant of the whole series. Predictably, it’s Essiedu in particular who, even when his casting was only a rumour, has come up against the most backlash.
But if HBO handle the new dynamics, which will be unavoidably affected by the character’s change of race, with the appropriate complexity and sensitivity, this also gives scope to make the story feel fresh and modern.if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }Nick Frost will play Hagrid (Photo by Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images)#color-context-related-article-3641099 {--inews-color-primary: #b9244c;--inews-color-secondary: #f0f0f0;--inews-color-tertiary: #b9244c;} Read Next square COMEDY Why SNL's cheap shots at Aimee Lou Wood's teeth feel so personalRead MoreIt’s the mark of a good story that reading it conjures such strong images and attachments to characters.
The stakes are raised even higher by the original films, with whose all-star cast many fans now associate the characters (Alan Rickman as Snape, Maggie Smith as McGonagall and Julie Walters as Molly Weasley, for example, are all iconic performances). A 25-year-old fan told the Guardian yesterday: “I don’t want my experience to be ruined if they create something that’s too far from what JK Rowling originally wrote.”There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical.
The IP grab, Rowling’s tweets, adults who dress up in cloaks to go to King’s Cross on 1 September. The books were a core part of millennial childhood, and the films are a beautifully nostalgic relic: there is a case to be made generally for just leaving it alone. On paper, there is a lot that could go wrong.
But this announcement is a sign that it might just go right, giving the original series the longform treatment it deserves, and injecting new life into a beloved British institution. Putting brilliant new faces to old names is the first step in achieving that..
