Not even two weeks after officially joining Season 2 of HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter adaptation as clueless celebrity author Gilderoy Lockhart, Nicholas Hoult and his team realized the scheduling wasn’t going to work out — as if somebody had just got around to checking the actor’s Google calendar.
Despite what official reporting claimed, the online consensus appeared to believe that the departure had nothing to do with scheduling (unless Hoult had his 2027 blocked off for “Not being yelled at”) and everything to do with the uproar that his original casting caused.
The world is still four months out from the Christmastime premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone, the first installment of the television adaptation of anti-trans author J.K. Rowling’s books, and already, the internet and the media have firmly established a relationship with the series and the people involved with it. Just ask John Lithgow. The 80-year-old actor, who is set to play Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore for the next eight years, told The New York Times that he expects that “every interview I will ever do for the rest of my life this will come up.”
And there are a few reasons for that. One has to do with how explicit Rowling has been with her support (both politically and financially) of anti-trans initiatives. By funding efforts to take away rights from trans individuals, Rowling has directly tied the consumption of anything related to the Wizarding World to an inhumane political movement. And that’s just for people watching the show. Those participating in its creation, like Lithgow and (until he departed) Hoult, are being seen as explicitly working to promote the brand and whoever may benefit from efforts to revitalize it.
Actress Bel Powley, who plays Harry’s Aunt Petunia, perhaps unintentionally embodied the conflict many involved with the series or looking forward to its premiere may be feeling when she told The Telegraph, “I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance,” before adding, “But I love Harry Potter.”
Not everyone within the industry feels such conflict, however. Black Mirror director Ally Pankiw shared a screenshot of texts between her and her agents in which the rep asked (admittedly expecting a certain answer) if she would direct on the Potter series. “Absolutely f–king not! lol,” she replied and then added in the caption, “It simply is this easy to say no to funding transphobia!”
And while there are differing options on the acceptability of the Harry Potter series both in and out of the entertainment industry, it does feel somewhat safe to presume that the average Harry Potter fan and potential viewer will fall somewhere closer to Powley’s position — conflicted, if not overly bothered. Consumers will consume (especially Potter fans, who made the Hogwarts Legacy video game a bestseller in 2023), and there’s still plenty of people in the world who — at best — couldn’t care one way or another what Rowling believes or how she’s spending her money.
So presuming the ratings for Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone don’t signal an outright bomb, where else could the specter of Rowling damage the series? (Other than forcing production to keep hunting for directors and replacement actors, of course.) While its an old saw that Hollywood is not as liberal as its wrap would suggest, the arts still generally attract more progressive thinkers, and award shows are still popularity contests at the end of the day.
By the time next year’s Emmy Awards roll around, Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone and its likely controversial rollout will be months in the rearview. Will a preponderance of the Television Academy really be looking to throw a vote toward a remake of still-ubiquitous movie, especially one hauling around a trunk-sized amount of toxic baggage, regardless of its perceived qualities? With so many other, less-icky options, members of the Television Academy might find their ballot rife with scheduling conflicts.
