What is pale, sallow, and contains enough hair-originated grease to rival an oil spill? The answer, as Harry Potter fans will be bursting to tell anyone who will listen, is Severus Snape. The answer is not Paapa Essiedu.
Essiedu, if Deadline can be believed, is the man that the big brains in HBO's casting department for the upcoming Harry Potter show have decided was the new and improved Snape. As will have escaped no one's notice, Essiedu, is a black actor, whereas the Snape in the books is as Caucasian as they come. Not only does Essiedu look as similar to Snape as Timothee Chalamet does to Maula Jatt, there is also the niggling problem that his character spends his formative years being mercilessly mocked by white students. Filmmakers may be unable to see the implications of any of this, but astute Potter fans are scratching their heads to figure out who thought this would be a good idea.
More than skin deep
In the case of Essiedu, the unhappiness of fans runs far deeper than pure aesthetics. For those who are still unaware, Snape's undiluted loathing of Harry stems from his school days, a large number of which were spent being relentlessly bullied at the hands of fellow student and resident jock James Potter, Harry's father.
In one memorable scene, a teenage James uses his wand to hoist the unpopular Snape up his ankles unprovoked and leave him dangling upside down from a tree before a crowd of braying bystanders. In doing so, James secures Snape's undying hatred. Later in life, matters are not helped by Harry inheriting most of his father's looks.
When they reach this part of the story, will HBO also include white hoods – the sartorial choice favoured by every fashionable self-respecting member of the Ku Klux Klan – as part of TV James' costume as he comes precariously close to lynching a black student? Or have they not read that far ahead? Based on the inventiveness and cluelessness of past directors, both options are a possibility. Whatever the case, it will not be a great look to see the shunned black student being bullied by the popular white boy.
Having said that, we have not yet had word on who will be playing James, so there is every chance that he, too, may also be black to get around this problem. Doing so would obliterate any hope of having a non-Daniel Radcliffe Harry who is a carbon copy of book Harry, but as we have already established, looks are of little importance to directors with a vision.
Broken promises
All of this has come as rather a shock to Potterheads, some of whom have still not forgiven the parade of film directors for ruthlessly sacrificing key plot points and washing away all personality from key characters. However, despite knowing how far from the source material ambitious directors are able to stray, the gullible fandom had fallen for HBO's promises of washing away the offences of the films and producing the most faithful adaptation of the novels known to humankind. Many have been dreaming for years about a non-wacky on-screen Dumbledore, a Ron with a brain, and a Harry and Hermione who never, ever waltz in a tent. After all, if Netflix could transform A Series of Unfortunate Events from page to screen with such regimental perfection, surely HBO could take notes and astonish us all?
To amuse themselves, a slew of eager fans had, over the past few weeks, taken to generating AI images of existing actors by giving them Snape's black curtain hair a black cloak. Among the ones to make the cut were Henry Cavill and Cillian Murphy, momentarily disregarding the fact that both of these men are far too old. They are also, sadly, far too handsome, prompting the very real hypothesis that in her teens, Lily (Harry's mother) may not have been quite so quick to dismiss Snape and switch allegiance to her eventual husband James. As a user on Facebook so thoughtfully pointed out, "There is no way Lily would have become a Potter." It is telling that even in a hypothetical situation, Cavill and Murphy – no slouches in either the acting or the looks department – are out.
Can Essiedu ever be Alan Rickman 2.0? Whatever waterfall of flaws the films may have been riddled with, Rickman's Snape was never one of them. The collective fandom assessment is that the only entity who can be Rickman 2.0 is Rickman's ghost, so poor Essiedu has a pair of very large boots to fill. He may be able to source a wig and replicate Snape's greasy unwashed hair, but will he be able to achieve the pale, sallow features Hogwarts' least loved professor is known for far and wide?
Irritated with the latest Potter development, one fan on X propped up a picture of Adam Driver and wrote: "There's an actor who looks almost exactly like Snape, yet they chose someone with a completely different appearance for the role. What are your thoughts on this casting decision?"
Those thoughts are akin to introducing fire to oxygen. It is not a question of being irritated by Eddiedu's race. Potter fans are not racist. They are purists, which is not quite the same thing. (Ironically, actual racists in the Potter books identify as 'purebloods', but do not let the similarity in names fool you.) Ergo, to the easily hurt Potter tribe, Essiedu's casting is right up there with film Dumbledore screaming in Harry's face about whether or not he put his name in the goblet of fire.
Not just Snape
Purist fans in other franchises have railed against a black Ariel in Disney's latest live action for The Little Mermaid and the Rachel Zegler Snow White – although in the case of Snow White, it is less of a case of Zegler's heritage and more of a case of butchering an already unloved film. Cynthia Erivo became the first ever black Elphaba in the Wicked film, but because she is green throughout the film anyway, nobody cares what she looks like in real life. Thanks to Elphaba's green skin, there is no outright symbolism of a black student being bullied because she is black. A black actor also played Hermione in the stage production The Cursed Child, but other than her being irritatingly dissimilar to book Hermione, unlike a black bullied Snape, there is no danger of sending out unwanted racist messages.
Tragically, we still live in trying times where there is no one who will slap screen brainiacs when they get their hands on a book and say a sentence containing the words, 'Yes, but what if (insert brainwave not existing in source material)." Until a designated slapper is assigned we can forget about HBO taking a leaf out of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events and watch the Harry Potter show when it arrives with our hands over our eyes.
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