HBO has pulled the three children who play Harry, Ron and Hermione out of the Oxford Street Christmas lights switch-on after activists targeted the event and insiders raised concerns for their safety.
The switch-on is set for Monday, November 9 at 4:30pm, part of an HBO partnership that includes a Harry Potter shop opening on the street November 4. The series premieres December 25. The leads are Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Alastair Stout as Ron and Arabella Stanton as Hermione. McLaughlin is 11. These are children, and they are not in the business of settling anyone’s culture war.
The pressure has been building. The Good Law Project petition to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which has passed 10,000 signatures, asks him to cancel the themed lights. It says: “Harry Potter lights in one of the busiest streets of London will not make trans people feel Christmassy, welcome, or safe.” Three weeks earlier, on October 15, trans-rights activists rushed the red carpet before the West End premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
HBO’s official explanation covers schedules. A spokesperson said: “We are mindful of our young actors’ busy schedules” while the second season is in production. The statement continued: “We have therefore decided not to involve our young actors in the official switch-on event.”
Insiders quoted by The Sun gave a different reason. One said: “It was all looking really exciting but sadly there are concerns about their safety.” Another said: “No one wants to risk their safety if protests go ahead.” The Sun also reported that HBO Max executives met the Metropolitan Police about possible public disorder tied to trans-rights groups.
Read that sequence again. A studio sat down with police to work out how to get a handful of kids through a Christmas lights ceremony without a confrontation. Eleven-year-olds do not belong in that meeting. They did not write a book, they did not say a word in the gender debate, and they were cast in a family show. The adults who made an event for children too risky for children have no defense. The behavior is unhinged, and it is horrific.
It is also not new. Wil Wheaton told the Advocate that everyone involved in the series “should be deeply ashamed of themselves.” On Threads, asked whether people were watching the new Harry Potter series, he wrote: “As so many have said, f**k no we aren’t, we are standing with trans people.”
Everyone involved includes McLaughlin, Stout and Stanton. A grown man who played a child star on television himself, and who knows what that job does to a kid, told the cast and crew of a children’s show to be ashamed. Those children auditioned for a part in a story they grew up with. They have done nothing that calls for shame, and the adults telling them otherwise should look at what that campaign is doing to them.
A petition aimed at an author and a studio is one thing. A climate where the studio has to hide its child actors is another, and the people who built that climate own the result. Will anyone who signed or shared these campaigns say that out loud?
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