A new rumor alleges that Paapa Essiedu, who was cast to play Severus Snape in HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV show, has been sacked.
HBO and its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced Essiedu would play Severus Snape back in April alongside casting announcements for Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, Quirinus Quirrell, and Argus Filch. A press release stated, “ The HBO Original Harry Potter series has cast six-time Emmy®, two-time Tony Award®, Olivier winner, and BAFTA and Oscar® nominee John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore; Tony Award®, Golden Globe®, and Olivier winner, and Oscar® and Emmy® nominee, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall; Emmy®, Olivier, and BAFTA nominee Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape; and BIFA nominee Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. All will serve as series regulars.”
However, about two months after that announcement a new rumor claims that Paapa Essiedu might have been sacked. Daily Harry Potter reported, “Paapa Essiedu might be sacked as Severus Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO Max.”
“This is just a rumor, nothing is confirmed yet,” it added.
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If the rumor is true, it is unclear why Essiedu has been sacked. However, pop culture commentators and critics Kneon and Geeky Sparkles of Clownfish TV shared their speculation.
Kneon stated, “Well, the elephant in the room is they cast a black man as Severus Snape.”
Geeky Sparkles added, “Severus Snape is very well described in the books as anything but a black person.”
“Beyond skin color, he doesn’t look anything like Snape,” Kneon added. “Snape is described as being kind of a greasy, oily, pasty, gothy character and he’s not that.”
Furthermore, he shared, “It opens up a can of worms because in the story, he’s dealing a lot with pure-bloods and mudbloods and he’s basically a racist, right? Or playing one. And also there is a flashback scene where Harry Potter’s dad torments him. … He gets hanged from a tree. Do you want to have a black guy hanging from a tree in Harry Potter? The whole thing with casting Snape as a black actor adds a whole element of racial undercurrents to it. It’s going to be a problem.”
Later in the video, Kneon shared, “There are a couple of things that could be happening. HBO may have heard the backlash because it’s making headlines all over the place. … And it could potentially harm the show. … A Sonic situation.”
“Two, he might have chosen to leave on his own ‘cause he might look at the backlash and be like, ‘I am not going to put myself through 10 years of this. Everything I do, people are going to be questioning it. … He might also have noped out too because, remember, he just went all in, like, he signed the letter against the trans bill that J.K. Rowling was all for.”
For clarity, Essiedu signed a lawyer condemning a UK Supreme Court ruling that declared, “he definition of sex in the EA 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man. Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men. Although the word “biological” does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman. These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation. Men and women are on the face of the definition only differentiated as a grouping by the biology they share with their group.”
It was signed by a number of well-known British actors including Bella Ramsey, Eddie Redmayne, Haley Atwell, Neve Cambell, Emma Corrin, Ncuti Gatwa, Peter Capaldi, and Emma Watson.
J.K. Rowling responded to Essiedu signing the letter claiming she had no power to sack an actor from the show and if she did, she would not do so.
She wrote, “I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did. I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.”
What do you make of this rumor? If it is true what do you think the reason really is?
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I don't believe this is true but I think that this is the studio floating the idea and seeing how it would play out on social media. At this point, they will never appease the wokies that have sworn off Rowling, so they might as well just make this as close to the source material as possible and if they <<really>> need to inject more diversity or whatever, they can give more screen time to Dean, Lee, Cho and the Parvati twins in some slice of life filler episodes than tank the whole show to change one of the most important characters in the show to get right.
Sure, and Kathleen Kennedy is getting fired, too.