Reclaiming Nontoxic Harry Potter Fandom as the HBO Series Prepares to Premiere

I’ve been a proud, self-declared Slytherin since middle school, when I announced my House loyalty by pressing a silver-and-green foil sticker onto the inside of my parents’ garage door like graffiti. Exasperated but not remotely surprised, my mother peeled it off and told me to get some nail polish remover to “get off the gunk.” More than 25 years later, I still consider myself a Slytherin at heart, and I have a Deathly Hallows tattoo on the inside of my left wrist.

There are people who insist that I should completely disengage from Harry Potter these days, particularly as an openly bisexual woman who is firmly anti-racist and an ally of transgender people.

Paapa Essiedu has received death threats for accepting the role of Severus Snape in HBO’s forthcoming Harry Potter television series. One message reportedly instructed him to quit the production or be murdered. Other commentators have occupied themselves with the physical description of Snape in J.K. Rowling’s novels, particularly his greasy black hair, and have concluded that a Black actor cannot faithfully portray the character.

Essiedu, meanwhile, has played Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, received an Emmy nomination for I May Destroy You, and won an Olivier Award. One might reasonably expect someone with that theatrical background to be permitted to portray an unpleasant wizard without having to endure threats against his life.

The fixation on Snape’s greasy black hair has provided a convenient excuse for people who cannot tolerate a Black actor inheriting a role previously played by a white man. They can quote Rowling chapter and verse, complain about fidelity to the novels, and congratulate themselves on their literary standards while treating Essiedu’s race as a disqualification.

I am perfectly happy to debate casting decisions, including an actor’s interpretation of a character. But I refuse to entertain bad-faith racism pretending to be textual criticism, particularly from people whose apparent expertise in theatrical performance begins and ends with examining the physical appearance of the performers and then declaring (sometimes while lying through their teeth) that they refuse to engage with the material anymore, all while harassing the people involved.

Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert offers an excellent example of what accomplished actors can do with a character whose literary identity has long been associated with a particular European setting. Norm Lewis played Javert in the 2006 Broadway revival of Les Misérables and subsequently in the musical’s twenty-fifth-anniversary concert. David Oyelowo portrayed him in Andrew Davies’s six-part BBC adaptation, opposite Dominic West’s Jean Valjean. Sam Oladeinde has more recently played the role in the West End, including the musical’s 40th-anniversary period.

All three are Black actors. I enjoyed all of their performances very much indeed and have praised them all for distinct reasons. All three have brought their own unique abilities and interpretations as performers to Javert, who remains recognizable through his obsessive commitment to the law, his pursuit of Valjean, and his inability to reconcile mercy with the system of punishment upon which he has constructed his life. Hugo’s character is considerably more complicated than the color of the actor portraying him, and I should hope the same principle can be extended to Rowling’s fictional schoolmaster.

I adore Alan Rickman’s Snape. I also recognize that Rickman’s performance involved considerable interpretive freedom, including his playing a character who was substantially younger in the novels. Apparently, some deviations from Rowling’s descriptions have become sacred traditions while others are treated as intolerable violations of the literary canon. (How convenient.)

Essiedu has approached the subject with considerably more generosity than some of his detractors deserve. In his November 10 Vanity Fair interview, he spoke appreciatively of Rickman and explained his ambition to explore Snape’s contradictions over the extended television adaptation. He also reaffirmed his support for transgender people, having previously signed an open letter supporting transgender, nonbinary, and intersex communities.

Essiedu has publicly defended transgender people while working on a production from which J.K. Rowling stands to profit. Rowling has spent years using her wealth and influence to campaign against transgender rights, alienating countless readers who grew up with her books, myself included. He owes her no political loyalty, and he certainly doesn’t owe an explanation to people who think refusing the part would accomplish more for transgender rights than openly defending them.

My position on racism is absolute. I will neither excuse nor entertain it, whether it comes from someone openly objecting to a Black actor playing Severus Snape or someone hiding behind quotations from Rowling’s novels to make the same objection sound respectable. Transgender people are entitled to full equality, dignity, safety, and participation in society. They already possess civil rights, and those rights are not subject to a public referendum, a celebrity’s approval, or the personal prejudices of J.K. Rowling. I condemn Rowling’s campaigns against transgender rights, including her use of considerable wealth and public influence to advance them. She has done real harm to people and to her own literary creation through choices for which she alone is responsible. I have no intention of excusing any of it merely because I still love Harry Potter.

Continuing to enjoy Harry Potter does not make someone complicit in J.K. Rowling’s political activities, any more than refusing to watch the HBO adaptation automatically establishes someone’s commitment to transgender civil rights. Millions of people who have lived with these stories for decades can condemn Rowling’s conduct without throwing away their books and socks and merchandise, surrendering their photos or memories from visiting theme parks or studio tours, or pretending that enjoying John Williams’ memorable themes constitutes a political endorsement of J.K. Rowling. Many of these people are impoverished, queer, Disabled, women, people of color, transgender, immigrants, religious minorities, or members of other communities that routinely face discrimination.

Anyone who wants to boycott the franchise is free to do so. I won’t be joining them, and I certainly won’t be accepting moral instruction from people who think they have the authority to make that decision for me.

In March, I published Hypocrisy in a Glass House: Criticizing Harry Potter on a Platform Pivoted Toward Harm, addressing the hypocrisy of conducting these moral purity campaigns on Meta’s platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s company had dismantled its American third-party fact-checking program, weakened its content moderation policies, and shut down CrowdTangle, a research tool used by journalists and investigators to track the spread of harmful online material.

Yet many people using Facebook and Instagram, generating engagement and advertising revenue for the very corporation responsible for those decisions, were confidently informing strangers that watching an HBO television series made them complicit in the mistreatment of marginalized communities. Apparently, the ethical implications of one’s entertainment choices are unforgivable, while the ethical implications of the platform used to deliver the lecture can be conveniently ignored.

I find that position profoundly unserious.

More recently, the controversy has reached children who have barely begun their professional association with the franchise. Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton, and Alastair Stout, who play Harry, Hermione, and Ron, did not participate in London’s November 9 Oxford Street Christmas lights switch-on. The event was organized in partnership with HBO, and opponents of Rowling’s transgender politics had gathered more than 10,000 signatures against the promotional arrangement. Reporting in The Independent described concerns about potential protests and security, including reported discussions involving police. HBO cited the young actors’ filming and educational commitments in explaining their absence.

My own family has some experience with the entertainment industry’s treatment of young performers. My son worked professionally as a model and actor for eight and a half years, represented by a major national talent agency, and appeared in national and regional advertising campaigns and commercial productions. He still has an IMDbPro! He also earned himself a nice boost on his college savings before COVID disrupted the industry. We subsequently decided he would not return to professional acting, which was the right decision for him.

I remember the auditions, filming schedules, and responsibility of making decisions for a child who was often too young to understand the business surrounding his work. He had some wonderful experiences, and I’m glad he did. But even a talented child who loves performing remains dependent upon adults to arrange jobs, assess working conditions, manage schedules, and protect his interests. Parents have responsibilities extending well beyond signing paperwork and getting everyone to the set on time.

Having spent those years on the parental side of a young performer’s career, I am indignant that McLaughlin, Stanton, and Stout faced a situation in which appearing at a Christmas lights ceremony raised security concerns serious enough to warrant keeping them away. The prospect of exposing children to a potentially hostile crowd, verbal harassment, intimidation, or physical confrontation over J.K. Rowling’s politics is appalling. These children had absolutely no part in creating the controversy, and they should not be made to answer for her.

I fully support the right to protest peacefully against J.K. Rowling and in favor of transgender rights. But protesters who create an atmosphere in which child performers may face intimidation, harassment, or physical confrontation have crossed a line. McLaughlin, Stanton, and Stout had absolutely no part in creating the controversy surrounding Rowling’s politics, and targeting them accomplishes nothing for transgender people. The adults organizing the event certainly had an obligation to assess the risks of crowd hostility and confrontations near arrival and departure points, but withdrawing the children from a Christmas lights ceremony should never have become the necessary precaution. The children lost an opportunity to celebrate their work because adults could not be relied upon to keep their political grievances directed at the people actually responsible. Peaceful protest is a civil right. Frightening children out of public appearances is not an acceptable exercise of it.

Many people who insist that others abandon Harry Potter entirely back up this demand by pointing out that J.K. Rowling has leveraged her fame and wealth to negatively impact transgender rights through public campaigns and donations. And that is true. However, I must ask these same people if they are making their demands for Harry Potter to be abandoned from a smartphone, and whether there is any danger that they might be what the internet likes to call a “Disney adult.”

Disney has financially supported Florida politicians who voted for the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education legislation, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Does buying a ticket to The Lion King, visiting EPCOT, or watching Frozen make someone personally responsible for those legislators’ votes? If that is the proposed standard for Harry Potter, its proponents have a rather large collection of theme parks, films, musicals, and streaming subscriptions to reconsider.

There is really and truly no perfectly ethical consumption of anything in Western systems of capitalism. This is a reality that leads to hot debates about almost everything: fast fashion and thrifting, discrimination against wheelchair users by autonomous vehicles that benefit some Disabled people, tipping culture and living wages, eating animal products, the environmental and labor costs of smartphones and other electronics, the exploitation of agricultural workers who harvest our food, the carbon emissions associated with international air travel, the working conditions of warehouse employees and delivery drivers, and the enormous electricity and water consumption associated with generative artificial intelligence.

As it turns out, making a great big fuss over other people’s Harry Potter fandom is weirdly invasive and judgmental.

I intend to watch the HBO adaptation. I remain interested in its cast, its approach to the novels, and the possibilities afforded by a longer dramatic format. I also respect anyone who has decided that Rowling’s conduct makes further engagement with the franchise intolerable.

Essiedu has spoken about the original story’s treatment of acceptance, forgiveness, and people who are different, and his determination to bring those qualities to a new generation. Those ideas were among the reasons I loved the books in the first place. Rowling has damaged her own creation through her treatment of transgender people, and I condemn her conduct without reservation. I also refuse to allow her political activities to dictate my relationship with literature I’ve loved for most of my life.

The racist abuse directed at Essiedu is disgusting, as is the spectacle of adults attacking the appearances of child performers and harassing ordinary fans while congratulating themselves on their commitment to marginalized people. Anyone engaging in that behavior has forfeited the right to lecture others about prejudice.

I intend to watch Essiedu’s Snape, and I want McLaughlin, Stanton, and Stout to succeed in their roles without being subjected to harassment over decisions made by adults. I also want people to stop behaving as though membership in Harry Potter fandom gives them the authority to police everyone else’s entertainment choices, political convictions, or personal relationship with the books. They have no such authority, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise.

The books are still on my shelves. Rickman’s performance is still available, as are the memorable musical themes and the taste of Butterbeer. The tattoo is on my inner wrist. Rowling remains responsible for her own choices, and the actors deserve to be assessed on theirs. I look forward to seeing what HBO has made of Hogwarts. Hopefully, the people currently threatening murder over Professor Snape’s casting can find another hobby before the premiere.