Harry Potter and Hollywood's Subversive Casting Problem

Once I finish the audiobooks, I only have to wait a couple of months for HBO's "Harry Potter" to debut. I am looking forward to that for a variety of reasons. First, I hope the television series allows room to include things from the books that didn't make it into the movies. There were a great many characters and plot lines that were left on the cutting room floor for the sake of the silver screen.

Second, I know that the series will tick off the trans activist crowd, who have targeted actor John Lithgow, cast as Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, for being associated with the project. Some day these losers will learn that J.K. Rowling is the queen and she has enough money and spine to fight them, and win. Today is not that day, however, and tomorrow doesn't look good, either. That didn't stop actress Bel Powley, who will play Harry's Muggle aunt, Petunia Dursley, from spouting off about Rowling and the trans community.

“I strongly disagree with JK Rowling’s views on gender,” says Bel Powley, who will be playing Petunia Dursley (Harry Potter’s Muggle aunt) in HBO’s forthcoming TV adaptation of the Harry Potter books.

“I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect and… pic.twitter.com/NzHWpjiM90

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 10, 2026

"I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance," Powley said. Rowling agrees with her, of course. Rowling also believes that such acceptance shouldn't come at the expense of women's rights and safety.

Powley should also ask Emma Watson how well attacking Rowling on this issue works. Watson tried to grovel for Rowling's forgiveness, and it seems hell will freeze over before Watson gets it. That's fine, of course. While Rowling was being threatened — including death threats — Watson threw fuel on the fire. She doesn't deserve to be forgiven for what she did to someone she later called a friend.

The seven-season show will undoubtedly announce more casting choices in the coming years, and the core cast has already been announced. By and large, I'm happy with it, even if I worry about John Lithgow pulling a Richard Harris and dying before he finishes his turn as Dumbledore. Perhaps Hugh Laurie can be his understudy should, heaven forbid, the worst happen. Laurie is Dumbledore in the audiobooks, and he deserves all the awards for his performance in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

Two days ago, it was announced that Nicholas Hoult will be Gilderoy Lockhart, the second-year Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who is more bravado than he is brains. This is brilliant casting. Hoult is a talented actor who can play the bombastic Lex Luthor in "Superman" (2025), a foodie who learns his place in the disturbing film "The Menu," (2022) where he holds his own against Ralph Fiennes (who also played Lord Voldemort in the movies), and even played a love struck zombie in "Warm Bodies" (2013).

It also throws into even sharper relief just how bad the casting is, with Paapa Essiedu as Professor Severus Snape, the Hogwarts Potions master. I have no problem with Essiedu as an actor; he's fine. But he's not Snape, who is repeatedly described as pale, sallow, and white in the books with long, greasy black hair. Snape is, bluntly, an a****le, too. He routinely abuses his authority with students he doesn't like, favors his own Slytherin students, and psychologically tortures Harry. Snape is not liked and trusted by most of the Hogwarts students and was bullied by James Potter, Harry's father, and his band of friends when they all attended the wizarding school together. 

Casting a black man in such a pivotal role was intentionally subversive, and it's meant to interject a racial narrative that not only does not exist in the book, but is wholly unnecessary to the story. There are already quasi-racist implications in the book, with Muggle-born witches and wizards like Hermione Granger being called "Mudbloods" and, in the final book, being persecuted by a Voldemort-controlled Ministry for Magic.

Casting Essiedu politicizes a show that did not need it, and will turn off some fans. YouTube videos featuring Essiedu have routinely been ratioed as proof of this dissatisfaction.

But it's not an isolated event. Christopher Nolan's adaptation of "The Odyssey" did the same thing, casting Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra, even though they were not twins in the book. He also cast Zendaya as the goddess Athena, who may or may not be a hallucination of Odysseus' and Ellen "Elliott" Page as Sinon, a character who wasn't in Homer's epic poem. Page is meant to stand in as Achilles, taking the role Achilles played in Hades in all but name. Even Nolan knew casting a woman as the great Greek warrior was a step too far,  but he also had Matt Damon say — with a straight face — that the 5-foot 1-inch Page, who weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet, was the bravest warrior Odysseus had ever known. 

The goal, of course, is to get Page a Best Supporting Actor nod at the Academy Awards. The Left was really hoping a few years ago that Karla Sofia Gascón, a "transwoman" who was nominated for Best Actress, would win. Unfortunately, Gascón wrote some honest — sorry, "problematic" — social media posts about Muslims, George Floyd/BLM, and diversity. That's the only reason he lost and Hollywood has been desperate to give an award to a trans actor ever since.

They don't care about how it looks, and Page looked ridiculous both on and off screen in "The Odyssey," but they want someone like Page to stand on stage and give a speech blasting "transphobic" Trump and MAGA voters. Of course, only dozens of people will see that, because normal Americans have tuned out of the Academy Awards.

But I digress. 

Hollywood needs to stop this subversive casting for political reasons. Even though "The Odyssey" made money at the box office, it only did so because Nolan's name is attached to the project. It's a bad movie with a bad script, poor pacing, terrible audio mixing, and even Emily Wilson, who translated "The Odyssey" on which Nolan based the movie, has slammed Nolan's work.

The HBO "Harry Potter" series will likewise be successful, but that's despite the Snape casting, not because of it, and I am going to spend the better part of the next decade debating and discussing the racial narratives injected into a work I've loved for 30 years. While I won't hold my breath that HBO does a last-minute casting change for Snape, there is still hope.

As I wrote about earlier today, Hollywood is refusing to fork over $10 million to Andy Wachowski, who now says he's a woman named Lilly, for his full-trans-cast film. It must be really bad if Hollywood won't risk losing $10 million after it lost almost $200 million on James Gunn's "Supergirl" this summer, or maybe they're realizing audiences won't go see that garbage anymore.

I hope it's the latter.

But given that Hollywood as a whole is on life support, and just reelected Mayor Karen Bass to pull the plug, they'd do well to rethink this subversive casting nonsense. It may be the only way to save their industry.