On April 14th of this year, HBO confirmed that British actor Paapa Essiedu will play Severus Snape in the new adaptation of the Harry Potter saga for television. There was already speculation that Essiedu would be the anti-hero of the wizarding universe created by writer J. K. Rowling. Still, the problem began when he was officially confirmed: they didn’t question the actor’s talent, but rather the color of his skin.
Paapa Essiedu has starred in productions such as Netflix‘s Black Mirror, Gangs of London, and The Lazarus Project, both available on Prime Video. He was even nominated for an Emmy and a BAFTA for his performance in I May Destroy You, available on Max.
Immortalized by Alan Rickman, the character Severus Snape is complex and transitions from hero to villain. Snape, the head of the Slytherin house, is a great enigma with an even more curious past. The character has become an icon, and each and every new adaptation generates comparisons to Rickman.
The criticism surrounding Paapa’s casting, in general, is not about the diversity in the cast but rather the consequences a black actor brings to the story. Harry and his friends’ suspicion of their potions professor is down to sensing a menacing, scheming intent behind his cold disposition. Cue the imagined new Snape going: Is it cause I’m Black?
Harry’s dad, James, and his friends bullied Snape at school in the 1970s, making him levitate and then hanging him upside down. If unchanged in the new series (this somewhat depends on the casting of James’s friends), this could now look like an image of racist bullying. Another question raised by a X user, the oldest Twitter, says: “If Snape is black and Harry distrusts him for no reason, that becomes racism disguised as a narrative.”
Despite all these issues, HBO has not backed down from casting Paapa in the role. And when asked about this to author J.K. Rowling, she said in an X post: “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.”
Despite all these controversies, the Emmy nominee posted a montage on Instagram with the cast of Harry Potter and for the first time spoke about his casting: “An honor and a privilege to be going on this journey with these legends. We shall eat and we shall leave no crumbs. See you at Hogwarts. Kisses from Professor Snape” he wrote in the caption of the post.
Another tension between the actor and the author comes from the fact that Rowling celebrated a decision by the UK Supreme Court on the legal definition of a woman based on biological sex, directly excluding trans women. The lobby for the decision even received financial support of more than £70,000 from Rowling. The creator of the wizarding world had already been involved in controversy when making public statements about transgender people. She also criticized the actors in the Harry Potter films for supporting transgender people.
Essiedu was one of the artists’ committee that signed the pro-trans letter. The letter expresses solidarity with the trans, non-binary, and intersex communities impacted by the Supreme Court’s ruling. The ruling and subsequent guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights Commission will exclude trans people from many single-sex venues, impacting the entire industry, from film sets to cinemas. To read the entire letter, you can click here.
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The article above was edited by Clarissa Palácio.
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