Rumored HBO ‘Harry Potter’ Snape casting already faces racist backlash
The Harry Potter HBO series hasn’t even finished casting yet and it’s already turned toxic.
The big elephant in the room when it comes to this show was always the extreme transphobia displayed by author J.K. Rowling. She is, and I’m not exaggerating here, a genuine threat to the wellbeing of trans people in the UK, being as she is an immensely powerful and wealthy woman with a huge platform. Rowling’s turned her ire on innocent people before and she’s certainly likely to do it more and more as the Harry Potter money keeps pouring in, because the rich face no consequences these days and don’t care about the hurt they leave in their wake.
All that, and now the racists have showed up. Casting for HBO’s Harry Potter series has begun in earnest, with John Lithgow cast as Dumbledore and Janet McTeer reportedly in negotiations to play Professor McGonagall. The casting rumor that’s tripped people up is Paapa Essiedu. The Black British actor is reportedly, according to Deadline, nearly closing on a deal to play Professor Severus Snape.
There’s a lot to unpack there. Snape is, to be quite honest, one of the most morally reprehensible characters in the Harry Potter series. He is a former member of a Nazi-coded organization and he abuses the children he’s meant to protect. If Essiedu ends up the only major Black actor in the cast (and there’s not exactly a lot of Black characters to choose from in the books) the optics will be terrible. All the while, there is no doubt in my mind that Essiedu will end up abused by racists while HBO, afraid to rock the boat, do nothing.
The racists on X are crawling out of the woodwork
In fact, the racial abuse has already begun. There’s been a barrage of posts on X that are just people clutching their pearls at the thought a Black man might play a white character. The word “woke” has, of course, been tossed relentlessly around. “Can’t wait for Snape to have braids,” one fan snidely wrote. “With this casting I have already lost all interest I had in watching this series when it comes out,” said another.
Others suggested “race-swapped” castings as a bitter rebuttal. “New Black Panther movie casts Andrew Garfield as the Black Panther,” another person wrote on X, who included a helpful image of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther alongside Andrew Garfield, just in case we’d forgotten what either of them looked like. (The number of characters of color who’ve been whitewashed is countless, by the way.) One person attempted to complain to JK Rowling herself, only to be informed that Rowling is transphobic, not racist—except she is racist or she wouldn’t be attacking African sportswomen.
It’s a mess. The sheer bigotry and nonsense involved is summed up by this hysterical post from a blue-ticked account: “They should make ‘them’ trans. That would definitely make it closer to the authors idea of Snapes character.” UM. I have news for that person, I guess??
If Paapa Essiedu does join HBO’s Harry Potter series, I wish him all the best because he’ll be dealing with horrible abuse. But at the same time I’ll be judging him for ignoring the transphobia and racism of Rowling. Can those two ideas coexist in my head for the next decade, the length that HBO wants the Potter series to last? I hope they can.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
