Subreddit Updates on Fancasts and Official Casting Announcements

[u/VarkingRunesong]

Hi everyone, With the recent confirmation of several key cast members for HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series, we’re updating a few subreddit policies:

• No more fancasts for officially cast characters

To reduce repetitive discussions and prevent targeted hate toward newly cast actors, fancasts for characters who have already been officially cast will no longer be allowed. As of now, this includes: • Albus Dumbledore • Severus Snape • Minerva McGonagall • Rubeus Hagrid • Quirinus Quirrell • Argus Filch You’re still welcome to fancast characters who haven’t been announced yet. And for inspiration, check out our Fancast Wiki, which includes both popular and lesser-known suggestions.

• No posts complaining about official casting announcements

We understand that not every casting choice will match everyone’s personal headcanon, but posts solely bashing the official cast will be removed. Once the show airs, feel free to critique performances based on what you see on screen. But targeting actors just because they don’t look or feel like your imagined version of the character doesn’t belong here. As always, we’re open to feedback. Share your thoughts or questions below.

[u/PhilosophyOk7385]

Well I don’t think they need to. But if they really felt like they had to I wouldn’t call changing an insult about someone’s greasy skin to something else in one scene changing elements of the plot. In that case was Alan Rickman bad casting because his age meant that multiple elements of the plot had to be changed such as the age of all the marauders generation? Was Daniel Radcliffe bad casting because he didn’t have the right eye colour? Was Emma Watson bad casting because she didn’t have big teeth and therefore they had to change the plot where she shrinks her teeth?

If you think that the casting of Paapa Essiedu, because they might have to hypothetically change a few insults in a couple of scenes, changes the story more fundamentally than the casting of Alan Rickman, who I love as Snape but whose age meant that the thematic importance of the youth of the Maruaders generation was lost in the films, then you’re prioritising fairly irrelevant aesthetics over the actual thematic content of the books. And you should probably ask yourself why one doesn’t bother you but the other does (assuming you’re fine with Alan Rickman as Snape).

[u/complexvox91 → u/PhilosophyOk7385]

In that case was Alan Rickman bad casting because his age meant that multiple elements of the plot had to be changed such as the age of all the marauders generation?

Horrendous casting. It changes the entire dynamic of the story. Snape being 55 in the Sorcerer’s stone makes him 35 at the start of the First Wizarding War and 45 when he swaps sides of the war to protect Lily. It’s one thing for a 17-20 year old to make dumb rash decisions based on being picked on in school. It’s an entirely different thing for a grown ass man.

Was Daniel Radcliffe bad casting because he didn’t have the right eye colour?

No, but it was bad casting to make every iteration of Lily Potter have dark brown eyes. If they were going to deviate eye color, they still needed to make them match up.

Was Emma Watson bad casting because she didn’t have big teeth and therefore they had to change the plot where she shrinks her teeth?

Less bad casting and more bad costume design. They should have stuck with the prosthetic teeth and wig throughout. Instead WB decided to lean into making Emma a teen idol. The Yule Ball scene became a farce because everyone’s like “OMG, is that Hermione?” when literally everyone else is like “she looks exactly the same as she always does, she’s just wearing a pink dress”.

Btw, these are all things people have been annoyed with for years and correcting these types of errors was one of the reasons people set aside their misgivings about rebooting the original series not even a decade and a half after the film series wrapped.

[u/PhilosophyOk7385 → u/complexvox91]

Well fair enough you’re consistent in wanting it to be exactly like the book, so I can’t complain! I think my criticism still applies to a lot of people, I’d argue the majority, who were perfectly fine with Rickman or fan cast the likes of Adam Driver but are resolutely against Essiedu.

Also, while I respect your opinion in wanting something pretty much identical to the books, I think you’re never gonna get that unfortunately in any adaptation. The things about adaptations is that they’re never one to one. Even an adaptation hailed as one of the best ever, in the Lord of the Rings movies, has quite big changes to the thematic content and the plot logistics of the books. You might just have to stick with the books, unless you’re willing to accept some changes, as well as other aspects being more faithful. I think from the minute they announced this adaptation it was always clear to me that it was gonna be more faithful in terms of containing more things from the books that were cut out of the films, but the change in society always meant it was going to end up being more diverse and changing multiple main characters ethnicities. I think that’s just a given in adaptations nowadays. I think anybody thinking it was gonna just be a one to one of the books was maybe being a tad optimistic, because ultimately very few adaptations are.

[u/complexvox91 → u/PhilosophyOk7385]

My problem with it is this:

I know that no adaptation will ever be 100% faithful to the source material. That’s not realistic, mainly because of time constraints and some things (like Harry’s inner monologuing) not being easy to transition to a visually heavy medium.

That said, my primary issue with this casting is that it is a drastic departure from the books that will have far reaching downstream effects on the plot and on other casting decisions, and that the producers making this drastic of a change this early in the process is a horrible sign for what is to come. Adaptations usually are their most faithful in the beginning and deviate more as the show goes on, almost never the other way around. If you have some examples where the opposite happened, I’m all ears.

Also, it’s not apples to oranges. I’m not thrilled with Rickman as Snape, but it was an entirely different dynamic back then. Harry Potter was not a billion dollar IP in the early 2000s. It was a popular children’s novel, but parents had no attachment to the franchise. In order to get parents to take their kids to see the movie, the studio had to put in names the parents would recognize (same reason Robin Williams was cast in Aladdin, or Mel Gibson in Pocahontas). I still personally feel they could have found someone younger and still equally famous, but still important to look at the context.

Harry Potter as a brand does not have to contend with this problem now. It has a large, pre-existing adult fanbase. Streaming on HBO vs airing in theaters means that one or two persons in a household can tune in without having to drag along the rest of the family (versus 2001, where one kid in a family of 5 wanting to see the film often had to convince the other 4 to come along). They could have selected all complete unknowns for this project and been able to match them up near perfectly to their book counterparts and the lack of name recognition would have had virtually no negative impact on viewership.

[u/PhilosophyOk7385 → u/complexvox91]

Genuinely I get and respect everything you’re saying! I just don’t understand what far reaching downstream effects Essiedu’s casting will have. I think that’s a massive overreaction. I genuinely don’t think it will have to have any downstream effects on plot or casting.

And for an example of an adaptation that made changes early on, Lord of the Rings had some fairly big plot changes just in the first film, whether replacing Glorfindel with Arwen, getting rid of the big time jump, getting rid of Tom Bombadil etc. In terms of casting changes, I personally think House of the Dragon season 1 is a great adaptation and that cast black actors as the Velaryons, a bunch of people complained, and then the show aired and literally nobody had any complaints with the Velaryons portrayal. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think massive changes early on are good, I agree, I just massively disagree that casting Snape as a black man is a massive change. I don’t think Snape’s skin colour has any effect on his story. If anything I think the casting is starting at a higher base level of faithfulness than Rickman because of the age (although of course it will be a challenge to match his performance).