Warner Brothers has announced nine more cast members for the upcoming HBO Harry Potter television series. Nine is a good number, because they conveniently fit into the grid below.
Top row: Katherine Parkinson as Molly Weasley, Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy and Johnny Flynn as Lucius Malfoy
Middle row: Leo Earley as Seamus Finnigan, Alessia Leoni as Parvati Patil and Sienna Moosah as Lavender Brown (all Hogwarts students).
Bottom row: Bel Powley as Petunia Dursley, Daniel Rigby as Vernon Dursley, Bertie Carvel as Cornelius Fudge
My first observation: the Dursleys got hot. In the movies, uncle Vernon was played by dwarf planet Richard Griffiths, and aunt Petunia by Fiona Shaw, who portrayed Petunia as someone who’d had sex precisely once in her life, purely for procreation purposes. From memory, they fit the book Dursleys quite well, although they were a little older.
The Dursleys are caricatures rather than characters, at least in the early books, and I wonder if the casting of Bel Powley and Daniel Rigby means they’ll be portrayed in a more realistic manner. But I guess any actor can ham it up.
Bel Powley previously appeared in the movie Carrie Pilby, where she played a cold, aloof genius, so I think she can play it either way. Also, those eyes.
The others look spot-on to me. Katherine Parkinson is a huge win as Molly Weasley.
Canary in the coalmine
Yes, it’s easy to write this stuff off as frivolous nonsense, but there’s a reason the casting for this show has attracted so much attention, beyond Harry Potter being such a massive IP. Casting is the canary in the coalmine for where the production team’s priorities lie.
According to HBO, the series will be a faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. The keyword in that sentence is faithful, and it can be tested by looking at who they cast. Are they ticking boxes for the identity-obsessed, or do they really want to do the books justice?
Because they really do have an opportunity here. The movies executed the central plot well, but left out a lot of detail and world-building that a television series can delve into in more detail.
But we can’t escape the reality that many existing properties have been twisted and arguably ruined by ideologues who prioritised identity politics over telling a good story. They’ll have to forgive us for suspecting that it might happen again.
Let me be clear – nobody I know has an issue with diverse casting. I certainly don’t. But when it’s done for no good reason, you just know a lecture is going to follow. Canary in the coalmine.
There’s plenty of opportunity to explore themes of diversity and discrimination in the world of Harry Potter. It’s built into the source material with the pure blood/half-blood/mudblood dynamic. You don’t have to force it.
This latest batch of announcements gives me some hope for this show. They’ve done more right than wrong on the casting front so far.
Is Snape Still Snape?
Snape’s casting remains the most controversial, not because of racism but because making Snape black changes certain dynamics and relationships in the story (James Potter bullies him and hangs him from a tree!). It also reduces the allegorical nature of racism in the magical world to a much more literal version.
But I’ve decided to be open-minded about it. It could work with good writing. Rumours are currently swirling on the internet that Paapa Essiedu has been sacked from the role, but who knows what goes on in Hollywood these days.
