On March 7, Deadline announced that HBO was nearing a deal with British actor Paapa Essiedu to play one of the most infamous roles in its upcoming “Harry Potter” television adaptation: J.K. Rowling’s potions master and controversial antihero, Severus Snape. In typical fashion, online discourse ran rampant surrounding the casting. Essiedu is best known for his roles in “I May Destroy You,” The Outrun, and Men, but it is not his previous work garnering all this buzz. The leading cause for commotion is Essiedu’s race.
Race blind casting is certainly not a new idea. Disney has been making live-action reboots of its animated classics and utilized race blindness when casting for the adaptation of The Little Mermaid. The insanely talented and divinely beautiful Halle Bailey won the role of Ariel, a human-loving mermaid who was white in the 1989 classic.
Even within the Harry Potter enterprise, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a play set nineteen years after the main series, departed its image from the books. Black actress Noma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione for the original London production of the show. Shamefully and expectedly, controversy sparked at these castings.
In retaliation to the uproar surrounding a Black Hermione, Rowling took to Twitter with the infamous tweet: “Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione.” This was great, except her claims of ambiguity were quickly disproven. By now, most of us know that Rowling’s “acceptance” only goes so far.
The weakest point of the argument against Essiedu’s casting is that he doesn’t look like how the books describe Snape, “…a thin man with sallow skin, a large, hooked nose, and yellow, uneven teeth. He has shoulder-length, greasy black hair which frames his face, and cold, black eyes.” But I think we can all agree that Snape’s depiction is much more than the pallor of his skin.
In the movie series, Alan Rickman almost matches Snape’s described physique to a tee. I consider the most notorious parts of Rickman’s performance to be the way he snaps his cape as he storms away or the nasal pitch of his languid line delivery. These elements brought Rowling’s character to life, and cosplayers mock whenever donning a black cloak and a bob wig. Definitive traits like these within an actor’s performance could easily be created or replicated by Essiedu, being the talented actor he is, regardless of his race. Some go so far as to claim that Snape is supposed to be ugly, and therefore, Essiedu is the wrong man for the job solely because he’s hot. If being attractive is a real disqualifier, then these claims go so far as to imply that Rickman is ugly, which is simply not true.
An unfortunate amount of Essiedu’s criticism spawns from the same racist cesspit as the comments against Dumezweni’s casting as Hermione. One such gem comes from a person on X with “Hitler” in their username, the post reading, “Race swapping lost at the ballot box.” As much as I am disinclined to agree with the username “@Natty_Hitler” for any reason imaginable, I have to say I’m concerned about Essiedu’s casting. My concerns have nothing to do with his race.
My real grievance with Essiedu’s casting centers on Rowling’s other descriptions of Snape, not related to his appearance. Snape is not the brilliant and bold Hermione Granger; he is not a role model nor a ripe opportunity for Black viewers to feel positively represented in media. He’s the opposite. Snape is a deeply flawed individual, a suspected villain, and, most alarmingly, a man with a creepy grudge against his ex-girlfriend’s son for looking like his father.
X user @GeraltofGoonia states, “Oh boy, can’t wait for the animosity between Snape and Harry to come across as racism.” This is exactly what will happen, especially if the boy cast to play Harry is white. Snape is an homage to the teacher everyone despised: an elitist, unnecessarily strict wretch with no fondness for children or life despite their chosen profession. Snape is a character who demands to be hated. To make him a Black man in contradiction to his more lovable white peers feels like it doubles down against the very thing the race-blind casting would try to combat. The optics are especially terrible, considering Harry’s dad, James Potter, was Snape’s schoolyard bully. Again, if the Potters are preserved as white, this would mean an eventual gruesome hazing scene of a white student terrorizing a black student in the mid-70s. How this lines up with the entertainment industry’s rising emphasis on more inclusivity within the media is unclear.
A valid retort to these concerns might consider the fact that Black and all POC actors should be just as available to nuanced roles as white actors. Certainly, no actor of any race should be limited to only hero or villain roles because production companies are more concerned with seeming racist than actually being racist. My counterargument here is that many other roles within the Harry Potter series could have been transformed via race-blind casting.
As the choice among the plethora of nuanced characters within Rowling’s narrative, Snape feels wrong. It is my opinion that race cannot always be ignored. These decisions cannot be made without thorough deliberation as to the actual racial implications of what the change would mean. Even in the loftiest fantasy settings, real-world implications will always exist because fantasy doesn’t come from just anywhere. “Mudbloods” and “Death Eaters” are not shallow accusations in Rowling’s Wizarding World. Essiedu’s perception, both as the character and a real person, should not be considered shallow either.