{"id":587741,"date":"2026-04-05T20:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T20:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/587741\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T20:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T20:48:11","slug":"snls-racist-harry-potter-skit-nails-the-problem-with-hbos-controversial-reboot-casting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/587741\/","title":{"rendered":"SNL’s “Racist Harry Potter” Skit Nails the Problem With HBO’s Controversial Reboot Casting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never one to bypass a viral topic, this week\u2019s Saturday Night Live<\/a> took aim at HBO\u2019s Harry Potter reboot series<\/a> to reveal (an exaggerated take on) the issue with Snape\u2019s recasting. After the trailer\u2019s release (actually before last week\u2019s SNL slot, which was skipped), \u201cBlack Snape\u201d quickly became a meme, powered mostly by X, with Paapa Essiedu\u2019s casting<\/a> the focal point of both humor and disheartening racism. The crushing inevitability of the latter \u2013 and SNL\u2018s gleeful willingness to jump on the meme bandwagon \u2013 actually does highlight a problem for the series. Which largely comes down to how the original book was written to be so anti-Snape.<\/p>\n

In the SNL Black Snape skit, Kam Patterson was asked by Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost how his week had been: \u201cNot great. We got this new kid. His name is Harry Potter, and he\u2019s racist as hell. Harry Potter \u2014 or, the Proud Boy Who Lived \u2014 spent the whole year telling everybody that the school\u2019s only Black teacher was secretly evil.\u201d When Jost replied, \u201cI think he\u2019s just worried because he knows someone\u2019s trying to steal the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone,\u201d Patterson\u2019s response pointed to what\u2019s powering a lot of the memes: \u201cSo somebody stole something, and the number one suspect is Black Snape? They didn\u2019t even look at the white guy in the turban. So offensive. He\u2019s got a wizard on the back of his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

The skit also lampooned JK Rowling\u2019s much-criticized naming convention, questioning the fact that the only prominent black wizard in the Wizarding Bolt is called \u201cKingsley Shacklebolt\u201d, as well as mocking how the Wizarding World still sanctions slavery through House Elves. Here\u2019s the full skit:<\/p>\n

Harry Potter\u2019s Reboot Requires Carefully Considered Changes To Avoid Issues<\/p>\n

\"SnapeImage via HBO Max<\/p>\n

Say what you want about the skit, and SNL\u2018s apparent comfort with feeding into the bad faith conversation around Paapa Essidu\u2019s casting, the show has to face up to the fact that the books write Snape as an immediate target of derision, who Harry mistrusts because Snape treats him with open disdain. The nuance of that was partly lost by the original movies, because Alan Rickman played a far softer version of Snape than the books, where Snape is supposed to be hated. The idea that Harry will suspect Snape of stealing the Philosopher\u2019s Stone (\u201cSorceror\u2019s Stone\u201d in the skit, but the series has gone back to the original British book title) based on only being black is a bad-faith read that ignores literally all of the context of the book.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what matters: what matters is that outrage economy is a real thing, and SNL has nailed exactly the issue the show will face. People turn an actor being cast on merit into a joke, because of his ethnicity, while proclaiming their supposed concern for the optics, and then further attention turns that into a rolling rock. Does the Harry Potter reboot need to rewrite JK Rowling\u2019s books for the new adaptation to get around this? Probably, because it\u2019s already too much of a talking point. The idea that Snape could just be unlikable because of his actions and treatment of Harry now seems impossible because of the attention given to the fact that he\u2019s the \u201conly black teacher at Hogwarts\u201d. Media literacy isn\u2019t exactly at its peak: the problem isn\u2019t what Snape looks like, it\u2019s that people wilfully ignore context. And at the same time, optics \u2013 and more importantly, sensitivity \u2013 are both a genuine concern that HBO probably has to make some adjustment for.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the\u00a0ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Never one to bypass a viral topic, this week\u2019s Saturday Night Live took aim at HBO\u2019s Harry Potter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[142421,64,63,134,16984,281101,46340],"class_list":{"0":"post-587741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-answer-feature","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-harry-potter","13":"tag-harry-potter-tv","14":"tag-snl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}